Time for the rest of the story. Finally.

Thursday was our only glitch-free day during the trip. On Friday, we ran into yet another storm, and it slowed us down a lot. So much that we hit the edge of the city in which we now live (working on coming up with suitable nickname for it), it was rush hour (insert ominous music here). It took us something like an hour and a half to go five miles. Which meant that Daddy missed his 7:30pm flight out of Hartford and had to book a new flight for Saturday morning. It also meant it was too late to unload everything that night, and of course the mattresses were some of the first things put on, so they were waaaaaaaaaaaay back and impossible to get out. So we had to stay in a hotel again.

But on Saturday, Johnnycake and Dimples arrived from Bawstun and helped us unload. I should say helped Cowboy unload, as I mostly stayed inside with Dano and directed them where to put boxes. We encountered another fun fun fun incident when the boys tried to get our white couch inside and we discovered that the doors to this place are really, really narrow. We'd expected getting it up the stairs to be the problem (we live on the second story), but that turned out to be a breeze compared to getting it in the front doors. But by 7pm, everything was inside, and we had a jolly supper at a little Vietnamese restaurant nearby. And we even made it to church on Sunday!

But the glitches, mishaps, and unfortunate events did not end with our arrival. Oh no. We've had everything from the delivery man bringing us the wrong pizza for lunch that first Sunday to the internet only just finally working today to the electric switches for the gas stove making an ominous ticking noise whenever it's plugged in... at least none of us have gotten sick or injured (yet)!

And then there's the laundry. We thought we would just do laundry at a laundromat until we got more settled and had time to shop around for a washer, but one trip to the laundromat quashed that -- $3.50 to wash one load! We were paying 75 cents in Ruralburg and expected it to be maybe $1.50 here. But $3.50? Just to wash? Eeep! So we ran to Sears and bought a (Whirlpool? Maytag? I forget) washer that same day. Getting it delivered today. Whew! At those prices, this washer will pay for itself in 18 months.

We have had a piece or two of luck, though as Sam Gamgee might say. Our new church (one of only two Wisconsin Synod Lutheran curches in the whole state of Connecticut) has a nice pastor and a friendly congregation. And the library not only has a nice selection, but supposedly the interlibrary loans are free here as well! Still need to check that out for sure, though. But I just looked up Bobby Darin on their website and he comes up with 92 entries, so I could be in love with this library very soon :-D It looks like maybe I'll get to see some of his movies I couldn't find before... oooh, I should see what they have for Rudy!

So yes, an eventful move, but the Lord watched over us and kept us from having any bad accidents or getting robbed or having a vehicle break down or anything else that could have happened. Cowboy is starting his second week of work and next week it will be Christmas! And I'll be home for Christmas for the first time since 2001!

If I wrote a novel about this trip, it would seem so preposterously aggravation-ridden that it would have to be a comedy.

We didn't get everything loaded and hit the road until like 2:30 Tuesday afternoon. By then, it was snowing, so MamaRuth generously offered that she and Banana would clean our apartment so we could get on the roadahead of the storm. But we had to drop the piano off at Banana's home first, and by the time it was unloaded, the roads were pretty awful. We ate supper at her place, then got a hotel and watched Amazing Grace on pay-per-view. I'll try to blog about it some time -- for now I'll just say Ioan Gruffudd is getting even better looking, if that's possible!

It's a good thing we stopped when we did, because we saw 2 semis and several cars still in the ditch when we set out yesterday morning, and lots of tracks where others had already been rescued. We ran into the storm again in IL/IN and that slowed us down for a while. But we survived it. We have to stop about every 2 hours to fill up the truck/clean someone's wiper blades/go to the bathroom/get food, so we don't make the greatest time. Plus, the truck can't go above 70.

By supper time last night, Dano was ultra-cranky (he cried for almost 45 min straight -- he loathes his car seat), Daddy and Cowboy were pretty tired, and we were going to have supper with the Chameleon and her Gonna-Be Preacher Man yet, so Dad started calling hotels to see if we could get rooms for the night. All the ones he called were full, so we decided to pull off at a La Quinta we spotted because Dad had liked the one we stayed in the night before.

And that's when we encountered the latest glitch for this mission: Dad nicked a car in the parking lot with the step that sticks out from the passenger side of the truck cab. All it did was make a scratch on the car's wheel well, but it turned out the car was a rental. Thankfully, the guy turned out to be super nice (he's from the Bronx -- guess the good guys didn't all leave with Bobby Darin and Vic Morrow). He said if it had been his own car, he would've said forget about it, but since it was a rental we had to report it, of course. Calling the rental company and the insurance companies dragged on and on, and the cops took forever to show up to make their report, so Daddy finally told us to go ahead and go to supper without him. That was really sad because we were going to this restaurant he and Mom loved when they were in the Seminary, and now he had to miss out :-( We had a nice time with the Chameleon and her Gonna-Be Preacher Man and got to see their apartment afterwards because it's really close by, and we got a piece of German chocolate cake to go for Dad at the restaurant, so he didn't miss everything, at least.

This morning, Dano woke up at 5am again, so at 6, I came down here to the lobby because that's when the continental breakfast starts. So I'm checking email and sipping coffee mixed with hot chocolate and nursing Dano and waiting for it to be time to wake Cowboy and Daddy up. They have to go see a State Farm insurance agent this morning, so that will be another delay. The big question now is: will we get Daddy to the airport in time for his flight tomorrow night? It doesn't matter that we most likely won't get the truck unloaded while he's here, because Johnnycake and Dimples are coming up on Saturday, so they can help with that.

Never move in winter.

A moving update for all you out there wondering how the moving is going: thanks to my Dad, Noumenon, Cowboy's Mom, Banana, and the Papoose (who loved helping his Uncle Noumenon pull the handcart), the last few boxes are in the process of being loaded onto the truck we've rented. Random stuff like cd racks and the card table and chairs are being left for tomorrow, because we've been at this forever and we're getting really really really tired -- Dad's been up since 4am, Cowboy's been up since 4:30, and I've been up since 5:30... and yeah... forming coherent thoughts is getting tough for both Cowboy and me. Especially for Cowboy, since he had food poisoning yesterday and is still feeling not particularly up to par.

So we're heading to a motel for the night in just a bit, and we'll come back in the morning to finish loading the truck and to clean the apartment (oh joy, oh rapture). We had a few setbacks (Cowboy's food poisoning put our final packing way behind schedule; Dad's flight was delayed), so we won't be leaving first thing tomorrow like we'd hoped, but hey, what can you do? At least it hasn't snowed again, we look like we've got clear sailing for the next few days... and what are plans for but to be rearranged, huh?

And I'd like to say a big thank-you to Noumenon, Banana, and Cowboy's Mom for coming over to help with the last-minute packing and loading the truck, and to my Dad for flying up here to to help with all the loading and driving. We'd be sunk without you! Hope you liked the brownies.

(And to everyone who disagreed when I told them I wouldn't be done packing everything by the time Dad arrived today, I say: I told you so!)