moving home..

so we get a call from our realtor on friday night telling us that she may have a tenant for our home and how fast can we get our junk out. sounded simple enough. after 3 minutes of discussion, jen and i decided to dump the kids with some friends, recruit some moving buddies, rent a u-haul, and drive 13 hrs to retrieve our "junk".

thus, our misadventure spawned from the dark pits of hades began...before this journey would end, we would be pummeled by a plague of pinkeye, vandalized by a vomitous stomach virus, and hounded by a gremlin infested u-haul truck. as a bonus, we would pass through three blizzards, and be visited by a house sitting cat with overactive bowels. all the while, being cooped up in a cab with my brother, whom i am convinced is an alien sent from some distant planet (perhaps Uranus) to contaminate our life sustaining fresh air with his limitless supply of toxic gas.

the moving crew consisted of jen, sissy, jeremiah, brad, amy, jonathon and myself (see above photo). we left early on saturday morning and were digging thru wal-mart's dumpsters for empty boxes by 10 o' clock saturday night. our plan was to pack and load all of our belonging and get back home by monday night. so, conveniently, jonathon decides it would be a great time to give pink eye a try. after a $125 trip to the clinic, we find that not only did he have the pink eye; but also strep throat and a double ear infection. to make matters worse, amy, eats some under-cooked bacon (thanks, I-HOP!) and spends the next day puking her everlovin' guts out. all things considered, we miraculously stuff everything in the truck and are on the road by monday.

just for kicks, u-haul (u-push?) rents us the most dilapidated and decrepit truck in their fleet, and coming thru the smokey mnts, we are met by a very robust, blizzard. jen was following in the suburban, towing a trailer, while i cooed and coaxed my gem of a truck up the mountain with "i think i can, i think i can, i think i can.."

naturally, the windshield wipers stopped working.
there have only been two occasions in my life when i have felt sheer terror. the first was during the birth of my daughter. jen was in the middle of a contraction, and i was "helping" by stroking her hair and offering the assuring "it's ok, baby" routine. my mistake was underestimating her pain and standing too close to her mouth. in mid contraction she chomped down on the nearest protrusion which happened to be my left love-handle. she screamed, i screamed, and for an instant, i thought i would die a horrible and agonizing death. my second brush with terror was plummeting down the slippery side of the smokey mnts in a snow storm without wipers.

by some benevolent act of kindness, we plowed through and made it back home around 1am. beat and dragging, we stumbled thru the front door to be greeted by a big, black cat and the worst smell you could imagine. evidently, in our haste to leave on friday, we had locked our neighbor's cat in our house. the cat didn't seem to mind being thrust into a house sitting job and looked very comfortable. he had scattered trash all over the kitchen, blanketed the furniture with a healthy layer of hair, and made numerous, smelly little deposits. we knew it was a male cat (pay attention daz) by the very alluring 'spray' scent that permeated the house.

ah, the joys of moving!

well, after a lot of scrubbing and a little help from the rug doctor, we erased the memory of 'Sneaky' from our abode. jonathon is hopped up on antibiotics, the snow has melted in knoxville, and i got a discount from u-haul. i suppose 'all's well that ends well' (or some such nonsense).

of course, our realtor called back. the deal fell through.