I ran to the bedroom and started jumping into the clothes I had laid out the night before. Mrguy woke up and I told him that I'd messed up and was late. He showed me that it was actually 6:45, the time I'd intended to wake up. Nothing like a little adrenaline to start your day.
Move Day!!!!!
Sure enough, the moving permit I'd ordered didn't arrive but it worked out ok. Everything, in the end, turned out ok. It was a full day. I showed the movers the color code, how to pack the fragile stuff, and they really didn't realize how much stuff had to be hand packed. I still don't know how much it cost, but I imagine a lot.
When they were ready to leave, I gave oldest neph the high sign. Neph was my partner in rapid unpacking and door-manning. Turns out that in memory care there is a keypad with a code for entering and one for exiting the area. Everybody who works there was busy because it was lunchtime. The movers were super cranky about the slow elevators.
AND SOME OF THEM DIDN'T HAVE THE COVID VACCINATIONS THAT WE WERE PROMISED THEY WOULD HAVE. That slowed us down, also. It could have effed the entire day if the community didn't also allow people to take rapid tests and then enter. Now back to our programming.
We jammed on the unpacking, and the movers said they wouldn't remove the large amount of cardboard we now had (this service was also promised earlier). We kept moving, so to speak, because the stagers were expected at 3pm. Eventually I had to summon mrguy to be our third person at memory care.
The stagers arrived on time and had just two tasks: hang the art and set up the cable. The art included my mom's / grandmother's Chinese lacquer screens, which are super heavy (imagine rosewood and semiprecious stones (i.e. rocks). Yes, they're heavy and I don't know how to use toggle bolts. I knew pretty much where I wanted stuff, and how high up I wanted it on the wall, so there wasn't much to do on that end. But the guy who was supposed to set up the cable didn't really know how, given the scenario and equipment we gave him.
WTF. In addition, in our move in packet from the community there was a section on cable that said that basic cable was included in our rent, but if we needed more than that there was a number we could call. No name. Just a phone number. I left a message explaining that we needed to change our service and we needed the tennis channel and could they help. The man left a message back, saying that he wasn't that guy any more but that another guy would call me back. "Michael" talked me through the process and it seemed fine, but he said I would have to go to Comcast and swap out our equipment.
K. So the stager with the experience couldn't figure it out. Mrguy to the rescue. He figured out the cable box setup, but it was a team effort. I had what I thought was my mom's account number (set up and paid for by my sister). And it was asking for my mom's birthdate, which we knew, but it also wanted a phone number. It wouldn't take the number that she had most recently had for 7 years. It was auto-populating with the area code and prefix of the phone number my mom had had for 60 years. But it wouldn't take the last four digits. So mrguy says "Do you have any other phone number with that prefix?" And I gave him the digits for my dad's old business line, which I'm pretty sure we gave up twenty years ago. It worked. I have no idea what kind of weird nonsense that was all about, but the box booted up and even gave us the Tennis Channel, which I gather is essential to my mom's happiness.
The report from Storage Land is that it had gone well, and that mrguy had anointed them with cash gratuity (despite their being unvaccinated and breaking something). Mrguy was also able to bring me some wood glue and a vise grip that I used to repair a broken part overnight.
Neph kicked butt on the bathroom details, organizing all of the random things that it takes to be a lady of almost 95 years, and put things away and took direction and let me boss him around, which was amazing since I don't know who trusted me to do all of this stuff with any competence. By about 7pm we were done with 99% of what we had to do. We went home, and that is the last time I slept in my own bed except for a nap yesterday afternoon.
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