Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Gotta be Moving Along

It's been quite a couple of weeks over here at the Frank and Hope household. The biggest development of all is of course the new knowledge that we will be parents of a baby boy in about 4 months. Perhaps even dwarfing that fact though, is construction work has been completed on our house and we are moving in! Tomorrow! The freaking out, oh yes, it has begun.

We hired movers for the big day. This not being our first move, and having tried both moving ourselves (and by ourselves I mean pressing friends into service) and hiring movers, it is really a sanity saver to just pay someone to move your crap. This time we decided - ok Frank decided - to hire the moving company to also pack for us. It made a lot of sense. We've lived here for almost 4 years. We have a ton of crap that would have taken me months of flipping through old magazines and trying on old clothes to get packed. These guys were done in 3 and a half hours. It was incredibly expensive and really, am I so lazy that I can't pack myself? Quite simply, yes.

Allow me to justify. This is the absolute busiest time of year for me at work. I'm up to my eyeballs in someone else's Christmas, from the tree to the gifts (buying and wrapping them) to the holiday festivities and traditions , to the damned Christmas Eve dinner, all of it is my job. I work just about 7 days a week during the month of December. I mean it quite literally when I say I don't have time to pack. Add fat pregnancy, which is an excuse for lots of things, and a general overwhelming sense of panic, and professional packers are a fabulous solution and totally worth the cost.

Why are we moving the week before Christmas? Fair question. The house is done. We've already made one mortgage payment without living there. We want to wake up in our new house on Christmas morning. At least Frank will. There's a good chance I'm going to wake up at work on Christmas morning. We have four months before the chicken gets here and that's if everything continues to sail along smoothly. We have to get unpacked, settled in, and start getting ready for his arrival. I'm not going crazy over setting up the perfect nursery - I am resisting the baby gear marketing machine with all my might - but the boy can't sleep in a drawer. It's just time.

So we're all packed and the movers are coming tomorrow morning to do their thing. Frank will be here for the moving out but he has to work tomorrow and probably won't be around for all of the moving in. My mother in law has taken the day off from work to come help me out with the movers - you know, directing them and stuff. I'm extremely grateful for this help. Decision making is not my forte. I tend to stare and get glassy eyed and confused. Alberta (the MIL) on the other hand, is a decision making machine. She's also very practical. My own mother is jetting off to Spain tonight to visit her family and my sister. It's her first time home for Christmas in 29 years, her only grandson lives there, and my sister is prego and needs some love from her mommy too so I don't begrudge Mom going one bit. I'm awful glad though, that I have my other mom here with me to keep the panic to a minimum.

My plan for tomorrow is to dive in and start unpacking right away. With Alberta there I should be able to stay on task, although I have lots of old clothes to try on.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Use your unpacking time as a chance to sort out for a garage sale. Well, at least it's a good excuse for me in not getting everything taken out of the boxes!

Rinny said...

Congratulations on getting things packed and moved. Best of luck with the unpacking today and over the next several weeks. It is an undertaking, but you and Alberta can knock it out I am sure.