Arrival

It is hard to believe that today is part of the same week as Monday. The last three days have been utter insanity with a heaping dose of exhaustion thrown in for good measure.

The movers arrived three hours later than expected on Monday. The truck pulled away from the apartment around 1:30 and I got on the road about 2:30. I did not expect the act of leaving to hit me as hard as it did. For the first time since this whole thing started I actually got emotional about it. So, the first hour or so of my drive was pretty difficult.

There is a part of me that will always belong in Atlanta I guess. If for some reason this whole thing doesn’t work out, I have no problem with the idea of going back. I didn’t feel the same way about St. Pete. When I pulled out of there, I was done.

That having been said, I have no doubt that this move was the right thing for us to do and that we will be happy and successful here. I’m just saying that despite my good feelings about Columbus, I hated driving out of Atlanta on Monday, and I guess it shouldn’t really have surprised me the way it did.

Anyway, sticking with their pattern, the movers arrived at the new apartment several hours later than we had hoped but that turned out for the best because when we walked into the apartment we were greeted by filth.

For some inexplicable reason, despite having more than a month to get things ready for us, nobody had bothered to clean. The carpet, which is a gray and speckled berber, had a tremendous stain in the middle of the living room. There were also multiple cigarette burns. The linoleum was dirty, the shower had dried cleanser all over it and the kitchen counters and cabinets were sticky. Ya’ll I went stark raving nuts.

I’m a good one for exploding internally and yelling and complaining to friends and family but when it comes to actual confrontational anger with service professionals, I’m usually a big chicken. Not so on Monday. I chewed that poor girl in the leasing office out. I used words like unacceptable. I asked for the property manager to come to my apartment. I believe Ape Shit is a pretty apt description of the state of things.

It didn’t help. The best we got was the carpet cleaner to come out. Oh, and a promise that the cleaning lady would come just as soon as she was finished with her lunch, which was apparently after 4 p.m. Nice lunch. By the time she got here Tanya had already scrubbed the hell out of everything and when the lady knocked on the door Tanya just looked at her in disgust and said, no thank you, I’ve already done it. Buh-bye.

Bloody hell. And then there are the cabinets. The cabinets, which are not supposed to be hanging here. In every conversation I had with our leasing agent I mentioned these cabinets and was assured they’d be removed before we moved in. The head of maintenance told me it was the first he’d heard of it when I was flailing my arms around the room pointing and barking at the property manager about them. Nice. And you know what? The fuckers are still hanging there three days later, despite daily assurances that they will be removed ASAP. Honestly, if they don’t get them out this week I may very well get my crow bar and rip them out myself.

Okay, so that’s the bad. The good? Jenny comes over just to hang out and watch reality television. The apartment is big and bright and open. The toilet works (our toilet at the last place was a piece of junk that took three flushes to accomplish anything). All of our stuff arrived unbroken. The area where we live is packed with everything we need. I’ve already done some driving and shopping and we’ve pretty much got every chain restaurant and fast food joint imaginable, a good grocery store (I love Giant Eagle, someday they’ll get an entry all their own), hardware stores, a Value City and a T.J. Max, a Target and an Old Navy, and lots of other stuff, all within about a 4 mile radius. This is very cool.

We knocked out a ton of unpacking yesterday, enough so that I was even able to cook a good dinner last night in a working, albeit cluttered, kitchen.

Next comes more unpacking, job hunting, exploration and hopefully, a little play time this weekend with my family. Emily is driving in from Chicago this weekend to hang out and celebrate with us and I think we’re going to have a great time.

Overall, we’re happy to be here. Just a little overwhelmed, both physically and emotionally.

Oh, the car and the cats did just fine.