Adventure! (pt 2) Debacle

The tenses in this one are all screwed up. Didn't feel like editing!

So Mom is supposed to fly out to Boston on Friday morning (the day before we’re supposed to leave), and fly back in Friday night. She and I would then pick up the U-Haul truck around 10am Saturday morning and start loading everything up. As soon as we are done we are supposed to get in the truck and drive to Philadelphia and stay with a friend of mom’s for the night. Sunday we were supposed to get back in the truck and be in Brooklyn by lunch time. EZ PZ.

This was the plan. Well – as Lormarev likes to say – we plan, God laughs.

So Mom flies out on Friday morning. Then Friday night as Jesse is picking me up for my “last night in town” we find out that because of the storms all up and down the east coast her flight home has been cancelled. She has to find a hotel for the night and the only way she can get back on Saturday at all is if she flies to MIAMI and then to Greensboro where my Step-Dad would pick her up. It is now extremely unlikely that we will be leaving on Saturday at all.

So Jesse and I go see Turn of The Screw at Hot Summer Nights (which was fabulous) and then go to the Burough for my last hurrah in Raleigh as a resident. Blasty-Blast. Total Debauchery. Raucousness ensued (you can see the pictures on Facebook). I get a little tipsy (to say the least) and as I no longer have a car Taylor and Jesse drive me home (we stop at Cookout), I drink a ton of water and go to sleep.

Brilliant me.

Wake up next morning around 8am, pack a few more things, then Terry and I go to pick up the U-Haul. We ordered a 10ft truck, they only have a 14ft truck. Fine. I reach in my wallet for my debit card to pay for the truck and . . . it’s not there. No debit card. Gone. So embarrassing. Terry has to pay. We go back home with the truck then I immediately hop into my mom’s car and drive back to the Burough on the off chance that someone will be there and they would have found my card. No one’s there – silly girl – they don’t open until 4pm! I call Taylor to see if by some chance it is in the back of his car, leave a ton of messages at the Burough telling them my plight, and go back home.

Of course, of course, this is something that I never do – have never done! And the one time I lose my debit card is the night before I move and because I sold my car there is more money in my account than there has ever been ever. Of course!

Mom has managed to get a flight through D.C. to RDU and gets home around 3pm, after Terry and I load the whole truck by ourselves (I think I sweated off 14 pounds), and shortly after that I get a call from both Taylor and The Burough saying my card was nowhere to be found. Had to call and freeze it. But no one had charged anything so it wasn’t stolen. Just disappeared from the face of the earth. I finished packing, because despite the fact that I had finished packing almost everything 2 weeks ago there was still a pile of crap in the middle of my floor that I had no clue how to pack.

So I finished that, went to sleep, then Mom and I leave at 4am on Sunday morning. This should have put us into Brooklyn around 2:30.

Nuh-uh. Nothing doing.

The 1st half of the drive was great – and mom drove the whole way (I don’t think she trusted me to drive the thing). So I slept most of it. But just outside of Delaware (or was it Baltimore?) we hit wall to wall traffic and lots of rain. Same on the Jersey turnpike – wall to wall – crawling along. Apparently the weekend is when it has the most traffic. And if you need gas on the Jersey turnpike – forget it. You can’t pump your own gas in New Jersey, someone HAS to pump it for you, and that plus the traffic means the line to the pump is around the corner.

So what should have taken us 9 hours took us 12. We didn’t get there till 4pm.

Not to mention the fact that anytime I was awake there was a HUGE part of me thinking “What in the world am I effing doing? This is absolutely the crazy. Turn around! Take me back to my house and my room and my friends and green, green North Carolina and the lake! Turn around! Maybe Andy will sell me my car back!” And this is made ten times worse when we get to Brooklyn and have to deal with Brooklyn traffic and crazy Brooklyn drivers, and the GPS was very confused and kept giving us conflicting directions. All I could think was “No, no I don’t like this. I HATE this. I’ve always hated this, why on earth did I think I wanted to come here?”

And then we couldn’t find a place to park the monster truck in reasonable distance to my building, and then we did find one but it was in front of a fire hydrant (non-working MRL assured us). There are fire hydrants effing everywhere, by the way. Every five feet, it feels like. But we give up and park there anyway. Then we have to unload. Thank God it had stopped raining and there was a cool breeze blowing – but it was just me and MRL as mom had to stay and guard the truck.

But then, about half way through, something WONDERFUL happened. People came! Kat showed up, my new roommate Joey came down to help, and Amy Claussen came. Poor Amy, had so much to do but came anyway, got all sweaty moving stuff in, and then had to leave without dinner because we couldn’t find a place to sit down and eat. And we got everything in! And ate really good Chinese food!

And then mom and I left to go to the B&B she was staying at so we could get some sleep and take a shower. We called a cab and on the way over I had a mini breakdown. Then we get there and it’s lovely – everyone coming to visit Brooklyn should stay there – BB’s bed and breakfast.

But about 4:30am mom wakes up and starts freaking out convinced that the U-Haul (which she calls a U-Haul It) has been towed because of the broken hydrant and we will never find it. And she can’t get back to sleep. So finally I call MRL at 5:30am so he can check and see if it is still there. It is. But we have to move it by 8:30am anyway because we’re in a loading zone.

But the next day was better. After we got rid of the U-Haul everything was a lot better. Then it was all cabs and public transport and a lot less stressful.

The unpacking part I’m okay with – I like it – it makes me feel like . . . I’m starting something new and making it my own. The going shopping with mom part I like – we get to pick out little things we need in the apartment.

(I’m skipping over the semi-disastrous but successful Target run in the U-Haul to get a microwave where mom just went around and around the block wile MRL and I were inside because there’s no place to park the monster truck.)

And there are all of these fantastic ( at least I think they are) 99 cent stores all around the apartment. They are these cash only, Asian owned places a block away from me where I can get anything – ANYTHING – I could possibly need for super cheap. If they had air conditioning I could spend all day there.

The rest of the time is spent cleaning and unpacking and mom cleaning the kitchen (there are roaches) and back at BB’s then back to the apartment and more shopping and unpacking and then mom has to leave. And oh, oh, oh I love my mother. I am under no illusions that without my mother I would not be here, that I am a spoiled brat who doesn’t deserve – that most people don’t have the mother that I have to help them get here.

And I hug her goodbye as she gets in the cab to JFK.

And I almost cry. Almost. I’m almost crying now – writing this.

Part of me wanted to grab her and say “Don’t go! You don’t have to go! Just move in with me here!”

Because in the end, no matter how much I want to be independent, no matter how many tiff’s we have over the difference between mayonnaise, miracle whip, and actual salad dressing – I am still, and always will be, a little girl at heart and I want my mother with me always.

I wish I knew better words than thank you. But Mom, Mamma, Mommy, Mother of mine – Thank You, Thank You, Thank You.

So – a debacle filled few days to be sure, and at the time not funny. But looking back it gets funnier, and every day it will be funnier still.

Next – stay tuned for MRL and I’s adventures in decorating and traversing the big city. MRL’s getting a big “Thank You” from me as well. He’s gotten me an apt, a job, and has babied me through big city transportation. Talk about a God send.

I swear he’s going to get real sick of me real soon.