Ah, moving. It’s all fun and games on the “getting out of town” end. Donating things. Throwing stuff away. Organizing a couple of things. Then letting movers pack it all up for you and get it out of your hair… Tearing down is much easier than starting up.
Now, I find myself on the starting-up end, trying to find our way in a town Sienna and I had never set foot in prior to our arrival. And trying to fit what I thought was a reasonable amount of stuff into a 900 square foot house. Spoiler alert: There’s a storage unit involved.
In the process of getting settled, too many things have gone wrong to count, so here’s just one representative story:
Cable/internet/phone is one thing that seemed to go smoothly. The installation guy was on time and professional and set everything up properly on the first try. YAY! (Kudos, Optimum Online!) I bought a package that includes a home phone line and decided, for the first time in 10 years, that we should probably act like grown ups and have a home phone in case of emergencies. Grown ups are well prepared for emergencies and have home phones so they can dial 911 and have it linked to the home address. I figured, we might still have no furniture, no toys, and no dishes (due to late movers), but by golly we will have a home phone! We will be grown ups!
So I ordered an actual home phone from Amazon – a nice cordless one – and it arrived on time as well.
I plugged in the home phone and Sienna was fascinated. She had never seen a home phone before. (Ha!) I let her play with it so I could go back to calling/emailing/Facebook shaming/ and begging the moving company to give us our stuff. I periodically looked over to make sure Sienna wasn’t dialing real numbers and was pretty pleased with myself. She pushed the “page” button to make the handset ring and answered it over and over, also asking the movers to give us our stuff.
Then she announced she had to go potty. Great! Into the potty we went.
Plop! Plop!
Excellent, a poo poo! Good job, sweetie.
Wait… Where’s the phone?
I peeked into the toilet: Poo poo.
Phew.
WAIT…
I peeked again.
Poo poo AND home phone.
Ew.
I reached in and grabbed the phone (fortunately I didn’t grab the wrong item), washed my hands four times, pulled the battery out of the phone and disinfected everything with about 800 Clorox wipes. I let it sit for three days. Turned it on and it works like a charm!
I’m fairly certain that it’s clean now, but consider yourself warned. In case it wasn’t clear before, our home phone is emergency use ONLY.
Help me feel better. Who else has an… er… crappy moving story?
Rare Mom 