Saturday, June 18, 2011

Me vs. Giant Piles of Stuff Everywhere = Disaster

Life lesson #1 learned in the past two months: moving four times in two months is a Bad Plan. Let me chart this out for you:

Step 1: Rental house in Iowa to RV park in Minnesota in order to escape sewage leak making us ill (half of houseful of stuff into RV, half into parents' house in Wisconsin). Two humans, two cats, two dogs, six potted plants.

Step 2: After job ends, drive RV back to Wisconsin, thinking we can live in the driveway until we can move into the downstairs of the house (which involves major work because we have to move my in-laws upstairs so we can be downstairs and I can therefore vaguely function in theory without expending all of my energy going up and down stairs).

Step 3: We find out there isn't enough power for air conditioning in the RV, and it's 95. I attempt to live in the RV anyway. but keep having to use the guest room upstairs because my dogs are overheating. The cats had to move inside immediately. Meanwhile, my fiance is driving a friend around the country for an entire week, which means it's me going up and down stairs trying to keep everyone alive and quickly burning out.

Step 4: While living with my dogs in the RV when it finally cools off enough, I find myself getting really sick with cold-like symptoms. My fiance gets back, roadtrip done, and it occurs to me that I feel worst while in the RV, which, because of lack of running water, we haven't been able to clean or empty the tanks of for two weeks. And so we move completely into the upstairs guest room, severely limiting what I can do.

The Result: I only have two or three roundtrips every day on the stairs before I'm unable to muster the energy to go up or down anymore, which means I have to think carefully to plan everything and my fiance has to do almost all the work taking dogs outside or cooking (formerly jobs I was proud I could do). Meanwhile, when we're upstairs the dogs are unhappy and have to be crated because we're living in a maze of box piles and it isn't safe for them to roam. When we're downstairs, the cats stand on the stairs and meow piteously the entire time we aren't up with them until everyone in the house wants to commit kitty murder. The result of this is two constantly stressed out and puking cats, my dachshund having diarrhea and needing no less than four bathroom breaks during the night, which my fiance has to do because I can't go up or down at all at night or I will fall on my face. I keep running out of food because I can't keep track of what we have since I can't go in the kitchen whenever I want to, I can't keep anything clean because a) everyone's throwing up and b) there are piles of laundry everywhere and boxes and everything I need is always on the other goddamned floor. When I'm downstairs, there's access to the outside for dogs so I can actually take care of my dachshund's needs, but there's nowhere for me to lie down. Meanwhile, I'm ill, my fiance is having a tough period and is emotionally a wreck (he hates them more and more as time goes by), we're discussing hormone treatment and arranging lots of doctor's appointments as we're trying to help my mother-in-law very slowly move ten years worth of stuff upstairs while trying to get my father-in-law to at least think about moving the furniture sometime this century, and it's still like everyone except me is dragging their feet. Which, if switching the house around had been my idea, I could understand- I never would have asked to take over the master bedroom because even if I need it, it's their house, they get first dibs, no question from me. But my in-laws, the ones dragging their feet because something is always coming up, were the ones who convinced me that it would be good to live on the first floor, leaving me in this ungodly in-between state. And over all I'm glad they did, because it will make my life possible instead of physically impossible. In theory, even the animals will like it better. If, you know, they can keep any food down for the next month as nothing continues to happen, I keep getting stuck on floors, my fiance has to do everything and I have to try to live in a giant forest of boxes with all of my stuff spread out over three different floors, waiting.

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