Scheduled Panic: T Minus 7.5 Hours

Well, here we are. We're getting the keys to the new house today!! I'm pretty excited.

And I'm also getting mildly panicked. Last night I finally dived into some of the more serious packing and readying to move, and - oh -we have a lot to do. No. A lot.

You see, we rented a moving truck, and due to the place being closed on Sunday, we have it all weekend. But we only have people to help move on Saturday. Which means we have to make sure and get all the biggest stuff that we need the serious help with on Saturday. And a lot of that stuff still needs something done before it can be moved.

The fridge needs cleaned out. Three dressers need cleaned out. Another large corner computer desk upstairs is buried behind a bunch of stuff that I haven't even dealt with yet, which means it all has to be moved somewhere, so the desk can be gotten to. (Yet in this tiny place, there's no where to move it to - that's why it is where it is right now). Some of the furniture downstairs still needs cleaned off or out. I was trying to do up all my laundry before I moved, so I'd only have clean clothes to move, but after I thought I was done last night, I found another pile of laundry in the bedroom closet.

But all this stuff needs done tonight, because there won't be that much time tomorrow. Our first help is getting here around 10:00 a.m., but I have to be at the new house by noon and hang out there because the gas company and the cable company are coming. So I can't be at the old house doing this stuff while they're loading the truck.

It wouldn't be so bad if I could have taken some time off work, but that just hasn't seemed like an option. Always, always, we're so far behind, and everything is either an emergency or has an imminent deadline. I can't take time off work without making it up hour for hour ... and since I need the next couple weekends free to finish moving what we don't get this weekend, and to begin putting the new house into some kind of liveable order, there won't be time to make up any hours I miss at work, so - stuff won't get done, deadlines will get blown. That's the one real down side to my job, that I can't just take time off work for something without still being solely responsible for still getting the work done. Time off during the week doesn't really help when I have to go in on the weekend to make it up.

The line about "scheduled panic" was supposed to be a joke. But in reality, I do think this is going to kind of be a disaster. We didn't do nearly as much as we should have ahead of time for this move, and it's going to be rough over the next week. We really should have bit the bullet and hired movers. The only catch there would have been, I'd have still had to have everything packed up and ready, and that's the dilemma - I don't. Although I think if we'd hired movers, I'd have been more motivated to get it done, knowing I had to have it ready by Saturday morning.

Well ... it is what it is. We'll deal with it as best we can. The good thing is that I don't have to be out of the old house by any certain date. I know my buyer will be on my ass big time in a couple days, wanting to know when I will be out - but we never settled on a date, and legally I have thirty days, so there's nothing they can do about it. And if my boss (who is eyeball deep in this deal, you know) gives me too hard a time about getting our stuff out, I'll just tell him, "Look- I can either come to work, OR move ... but I can't do both at once. So if you want me out sooner, you're going to have to give me some time off."

I know one thing: anyone thinking you can move an entire household in a weekend when you've lived in a place for 15 years is kind of silly. Me included.