The Shitfest That Was Our Move

We have safely arrived in Jacksonville.  And holy crap was it a shitfest!!! Let's have a recap, shall we??  (It's a long one!)

Let me just say that the past week has been downright awful!  I do not like deviating from "the plan".  Yes, I know I'm a Navy Wife and deviations are just a part of every day life.  But that doesn't mean I like them.  {And you telling me that just wants to make me punch you in the gut.}  Especially when it can be avoided.  I will never, ever, be accustomed to straying away from the plan.  It's the OCD planner in me.

What was the plan, you ask?  The plan was to have the entire house packed by Friday.  Pick up the truck Saturday and have it loaded that day.  Sunday was a day spent for cleaning and saying goodbye to friends.  Monday was to check out and detach from NAS Whiting Field (for Nick) and head to Jax.

However, NONE of that happened.

Friday came and went and we were FAR from having the house packed.  Let me just tell you that made me a ball of fun.  Nicholas takes far too many breaks from packing.  'Oh look, I packed a Wii controller.  Time for me to play with my dog for 25 minutes.'  Then 'oh hey, I'm hungry, let's go get some lunch.'  This caused us to stay up until 1am loading the truck.

Saturday comes and we pick up the truck at 11am.  At least that stayed on task.  But after that?  Not so much.  Saturday we continued to pack and load the truck.  Until about 2am.  Ob-nox-ious.  And we were nowhere near done.

Nick drove his bike up the ramp and secured it with rope.  I sure hope this holds for the move!

See ALL of that in the back corner?  Allll of Nick and his mother's random crap.

Sunday was spent loading the truck some more.  The new tenants also complicated things.  We told them we were moving out on the 16th.  We never gave them a time.  We simply said the 16th was our last day there (and we paid our utilities and rent until the close of that day.)  The guy texts Nick and he tells him we aren't anywhere close to leaving.  The new tenant then tells us that he has a couch he needs to drop off by 1pm.  Um, okay?  (Let me also add they stopped by the day before and dropped off a lot of stuff).  Cool dude.  It's not like we're trying to load a truck or clean the house.  Come on by.  Drop your shit and clutter our space.  So he shows up with the couch in a U-Haul trailer...and then has NICK help him carry it in!  Seriously, dude?!?!  Can you not see we're a little busy here????  I wanted to stay until 11:55pm just to spite him.  Annoying.
Anyway, Nick continued to load the truck Sunday and I cleaned the house (and replaced our screen door since the dogs and their friends decided to create their own doggie door by running straight through it.)  Then we ran into some issues.  It appeared not everything was fitting on the truck.  Yes, the 26 foot U-Haul truck (the largest they have) was not big enough.  So we had to run up and get a trailer to pull behind the truck!!!!!  I'm telling you, Nick has too much shit!!!!
We finally got the truck and trailer packed and we were on our way around 7pm.

Sure, we still managed to leave on Monday, which WAS the plan. But this was NOT at all how we expected it to happen.  I have never been more stressed in my entire life.  Also, this late departure and all day packing meant we didn't get to do the things we wanted.  We had plans to say goodbye to friends but that just wasn't possible.  We had wanted to have sex one last time in our house (not apologizing, I'm a TMI person and it's not crazy to think we'd want to do that one last time in our first home).  But with the late nights, sore bodies, and now rush to leave, there was no way that was happening.  We took one last stroll through the house, hand in hand, remembering all the great times we had here.  Then we packed up the pups in my car, Nick climbed in the truck, and we hit the road.

But not for long.  We hit some insane rain and Nick realized the truck was really hard to drive.  It was scary for me just following him.  I could see the truck swaying from left to right.  Nick said it was exhausting driving it so after just three hours, we decided to stop for the night.  We pulled off at a security monitored rest area so Nick could get some sleep and be fully rested to drive the next day.  Unfortunately, I cannot sleep in a car.  I cannot sleep sitting up.  I can only sleep laying down.  So I didn't sleep that night.  Which was rough considering I only got about 4 hours the previous night.

For some odd reason, Nick climbed in the crowded back of the Accord with BOTH dogs and slept back there.

At about 4:30am, we hit the road again and arrived at the Robida's house (our friends, Jenny and Matt, our best friends from Pensacola whom you've probably read about who are kindly letting us stay with them) in the early morning.  We slept for about 2 hours and then it was back up to go unload our stuff into storage.

This was just a bad day.  We began unloading the truck, putting the odd shaped things out on the concrete (patio chairs, vacuum, office chair, bed frames, laundry baskets, Shop Vac, lacrosse sticks, tool boxes, garment bags, etc.  (The furniture, boxes, and storage tubs were in the back of the U-Haul.)  Then the dumb ass clouds opened up (we were in such a mode that we didn't notice the black clouds that set in over us) and it started raining on us.  We just started throwing everything back in the truck and into the storage unit.  Absolutely no organization at all.  By the time we got it all out of the rain, we were soaked.  We decided to take a break so we went back to the Robida's house and showered.  It wasn't looking like the rain would clear up, so we headed back to the storage unit.  We unloaded that damn truck until 6am.  It was painful.  We had to stop for the downpours which really slowed us down.  It was the most difficult all-nighter I've ever pulled.

I am so incredibly mad that we have to do this again in a month when we move into our house!!!!  Hopefully that won't be such a fiasco!!!


The only positive thing to come from this is that Nick has FINALLY agreed this is stupid and the few thousands of dollars we've made off this move are NOT worth it anymore.  The next move, Nick has agreed we'll do a partial DITY (do-it-yourself) move (where we move some of our belongings, such as his electronics and my clothes and shoes) and the Navy will move everything else for us.  Alleluia!  Praise the Lord!!!!

Unfortunately, we were only able to get another 2ish hours of sleep before we had to take the U-Haul back.  (They made a big deal about it being back by a certain time for the new renters.  When we got there, no one was there!!!!  We waited for a good 30 minutes before someone returned.  And yesterday (one day after returning the truck), we called to see if the new renters found our car key.  She tells us the truck is still there if we want to come look.  So WHY did I not get any sleep to get this truck back to you for someone else?!?!  Annoyed and crabby didn't even begin to describe us.)
Thankfully when we got home, we FINALLY got a few solids hours of sleep.

I'm happy this moving thing is over with, for now.  We have about a month to relax.  I guess I should say *I* have a month to relax.  Nick will soon head off for SERE and when he returns, he checks into the squadron and begins training on the MH-60R.

Finally relaxing.

Random tidbit worth noting since we received this comment a few times:  We heard from multiple people that this move would really test our marriage.  And that we'll get in fights and seeing how we overcome them or deal with them will tell us a lot about our relationship.  We were shocked by this because it didn't test us.  Not once.  Honestly, there wasn't ever a time we were legitimately mad at one another.  No harsh words.  No raised voices.  Nothing like that.  We were most definitely annoyed and frustrated with the entire situation, but not at all with each other.  It just reinforced how strong our marriage is.  Nick and I really don't have those fights.  Never.  Sure, we got annoyed but that's the same annoyance I feel on a daily basis with random things.  Annoyances aren't things I consider a "test" in your marriage.  We're both very understanding and patient with one another (not with other things for myself, but with each other.)  Throughout this entire process, even under insane amounts of stress (and tears on my end) we were able to laugh and joke around with each other, toss random items at one another's head, etc.  And that's what I love about us.  In the midst of something shitty, we're able to still laugh and hug and kiss one another (even when soaking wet, with half our belongings dripping in rain water.)  When I tell people this, that this move didn't "test" our marriage, they roll their eyes and accuse me of lying.  Okay, biznatches, hate on!  It's the truth!

Roadtrip: Cardinals vs Braves

If you know me at all, then you know that my husband and I are die hard Cardinal fans.  Actually, we just love baseball in general.  One of the perks of this military life is traveling the country and getting to live all over.  We decided to take advantage of this perk in regards to baseball and added an item to our ‘Marriage Bucket List’ (we each have our own individual ones as well).  We want to visit as many Major League and Minor League stadiums as we possibly can, preferably when the home team plays the Cardinals or the Memphis Redbirds.

Living in Pensacola, we have the Blue Wahoos minor league team, but we‘ve yet to go to a game.  Nick getting his schedule only the night before makes it near impossible to plan things.  However, in just a week he will be finished flying and we’ll have a few weeks to complete our ‘Pensacola Bucket List’ which includes attending a Blue Wahoos game.

Pensacola obviously doesn’t have a Major League team but Atlanta is only a 5-6 hour drive from us so we knew we’d be visiting Turner Field.  We got lucky enough that the Braves were playing the Cardinals over a weekend so we planned to attend this series.  We had to hold off on buying tickets until the week of the game because with Nick’s flight training, everything is up in the air.  Once we knew his schedule, we were good to buy tickets.  Our original plan was to attend both Saturday and Sunday games but they changed Sunday’s game to a night game (7:05pm start time) which meant we couldn’t attend.  We were a little bummed but seeing one game was definitely going to be better than seeing no game!

Saturday morning at 5am we headed to Ft. Rucker, Alabama with the pups.  We dropped them off with my sister and Kyle and then continued on our way to Atlanta.  We wanted to get there a few hours before game time to walk around the stadium and explore a bit. 

We had a really great time at the game!!!  Their stadium is really nice and the Braves fans were great.  I was shocked at how many Cardinals fans were in attendance.  I am not joking when I say half of the stadium appeared to be in Cardinals attire.  Our fans are just amazing!!!!  What’s even more awesome is that a “Let’s go Braves” chant was started and within two chants, “Let’s go Cardinals” was ringing throughout the stadium so much louder than the Braves fans!  (Just another reason we’ve been dubbed the best fans in baseball! ;) )

The game itself was pretty freaking boring and we lost which didn’t help, but despite those two things, we had a great time!  This was my first Cardinals game in another team’s stadium…heck! It was my first major league game outside of Busch Stadium and it didn’t disappoint!  We had great seats just a few rows up in third base line/left field corner by the foul pole and we got to see a lot of our favorites before the game and in the bullpen.

Sexy Waino (Wainwright for you non-STL fans)

A few people (Atlanta natives) had warned me that Braves fans can be rude and disrespectful but we didn’t experience any of that!  Everyone was so nice and welcoming and there wasn’t any rudeness or disrespect.  After the game, one Braves fan made a comment to me about losing the game (in a joking manner).  I refrained from reminding him that (at that time) we were the best team in baseball.  And that we’ve upset their beloved Braves in 2011 and 2012.  Instead, I just smiled and reminded him we still have long way to go until October.  But again, this was all in good fun! 

{{Please excuse this rant:  My only complaint would be that they tend to make fun of their fans a lot.  They have two different “games” (for lack of better words) that they put on their jumbo screens.  One is an “Oblivion Cam” where they zero in on someone (usually a larger person shoving their face full of food) and start a timer to see how long it takes them to notice they’re on screen.  The other is a look-a-like game.  They post a photo of someone/something (Snooky, Jabba da hut, Mama June (Honey Boo Boo’s mom), Duck Dynasty members, etc (basically, all unattractive people) and find someone in the stands who resembles them.  I’m sure this is meant to be in good fun, but to me, it was cruel.  Maybe it’s because I don’t find humor in cutting other people down and I’m a big advocate for ending bullying.  And that’s exactly what this is.  How do you know that person you just zeroed in on isn’t already suffering from severe depression or self-loathing?  By putting them on the screen, publicly making fun of them to THOUSANDS of people, you just set them back in healing or recovery from their issues.  Again, I’m sure the Braves staff think this is humorous but I think it’s just downright mean.   But then again, our society thinks cutting down others is amusing and a great form of entertainment.  Which is really sad.  But I’m just not the type of person who likes to sit around and gossip or make fun of others.  But this was my ONLY complaint and it obviously didn’t ruin my time so it’s not a huge deal.  It’s just something I’d wish they’d do away with.  Until we as adults stop things like this, bullying in children won’t stop.  They’re learning from us.  But I’ll get off my soapbox now.}}

The Cardinals/Braves game was definitely a great experience!!!  I'm happy to put the check mark next to Turner Field!  And excited to explore more stadiums!  I'm so happy to have a husband who shares this same love of baseball with me.  These adventures together are going to create a great scrapbook!