Fragile - handle with care

A very good friend of mine described her state of mind after they moved out of state.  Fragile.  I think that's a pretty perfect word for my state of mind these days.

During the last two weeks before the house closings, I focused on getting through the next day.  Seriously.  I took it one day at a time because if I didn't, it was all too overwhelming.  You've heard this all before...  Moving Hannah into a college dorm just down the street from our old house doesn't sound like much of a task, but that just means you don't have to plan very well and end up making 6 trips instead of one.  A couple days later, getting all of the stuff Jim took to school into a U-Haul van, driving 5 hours to school, unloading (with only me, Jim and Abbie getting the big screen TV, a couch, big chair, queen size bed and other little stuff into his new house) and driving 5 hours back just about did me in.  Two days after that, we rented a larger U-Haul and loaded the rest of our stuff.  We closed on the Normal house Thursday morning, I drove the U-Haul to St. Louis and John drove his car.  We closed on the St. Peters house Friday morning.  We unloaded everything from the van Friday, unloaded all the big stuff from the van that was stored at John's work Saturday morning, drove the U-Haul back to Normal, picked up my car and the Miata and the pugs.  We had everything relatively under one roof by Saturday night.

I only lost it once during this whole thing - on the phone with John late Tuesday afternoon.  I was supposed to have everything packed and ready to be loaded onto a van Wednesday.  John was coming home that afternoon and we would load the truck that night. Tuesday afternoon, I looked around at what still had to be done and freaked.  John must have heard the fear and panic in my voice, because he left work and came home that night instead of Wednesday night.  Thank goodness he did, because time and space where WAY too tight.  We literally could not fit one more thing on that van, and both of our cars were packed so tight we couldn't take all of our stuff.  We gave some stuff away, stored a couple things at friend's houses and kicked other stuff to the curb.  The last things were thrown in the cars and the house pronounced clean 15 minutes before our buyer's walk through.  Without good friends helping with the packing and moving some heavy stuff, we never would have made the deadline.

So now, I'm slowly getting the house together - and I do mean s-l-o-w-l-y.  It takes more time to figure out where everything is going to go than it did stuffing boxes.  The good thing - no hard deadline.

What stinks is that I wanted my last few days in Normal to be good ones, with time to relax and enjoy friends and family.  But I was always so pressed for time, I didn't have time to say goodbye the way I wanted.  Not like we won't see anyone from there again, but it's the principal of the thing.

So here we are.  We've met one neighbor and I've had lovely conversations with guys from 3 fence companies who came by today to give us quotes.  I Skyped with Hannah today - my first time.  I'm trying to get the master bath and closets together.  Our sweaty, smelly moving clothes are starting to take on a life of their own, so I'm looking forward to tomorrow's delivery of our new washer and dryer, and after a visit from the Dish Network guy, we'll be able to watch TV again.

I know things will be good here.  We'll make friends, welcome a lot of visitors and I will learn where things are beyond my current 1.5 mile radius.  In the mean time, I guess it's OK to be fragile.