All's well that sits in a hotel room and waits for everyone else to get their act together
(That sounds kind of catty, doesn't it? But accurate.)
So the kids and cat and I are settled in a hotel room outside of DC. Well, I say hotel room, I actually mean short-term furnished apartment rental, basically, in a complex full of short-term furnished apartment rentals to other government families in transition. Everyone seems to be adjusting pretty well - the cat especially, who has taken to sleeping on every cushion she can find. She is quite content. Our view is of a cemetery - a rather picturesque one, at that, and Andrew is kind of eager to go explore in it. I've seen dog walkers and runners in there in the evenings, so I think we might do it, once everyone's sleep schedule is more or less back on track.
To backtrack: Day two of packout was fairly short - the packers were done by 1:30, gone at 2, taking the Air and Consummables with them. Which left quite a lot of time to kill, and me somewhat annoyed because I'd really, really wanted to have an easy Sunday drive up to DC. But otherwise it went smoothly - though I didn't find the Netflix DVDs. Dammit.
(One of them was Deadpool, too. I really wantetd to watch that.)
I did get some writing done, though, so there's that.
Sunday was Day 3, and a whole new crew of mostly college-age guys who wrapped up the furniture and carried everything out. Sunday was a bit tricky, because I didn't have babysitting lined up for Andrew or Charlie, and couldn't use the babysitter from the previous days because Sunday. Two neighbors helped out, one by taking them both to brunch at the cafeteria, and the other by taking Andrew to the pool for swim lessons in the afternoon. Even so - I didn't even have a chance to crack open the laptop, because I spent the time trying to clean up the house behind the movers, and repack the car so that everything fit, and rescue the two empty bags I'd intended to take with us but which had been packed for storage the day before. (They were easy to find - the box was marked clearly. One was a collapsable duffel so big it'd fit me; the other is a travel bag for Charlie's carseat.)
(If I had the choice between finding the bags and finding the Netflix movies - I'd take the bags.)
It ended up taking just over six hours to load the truck - well, five, since they took a break for lunch halfway through, which I sure as heck wasn't going to deny them. Those boys were tired, I think a couple took naps on the living room floor. (They'd packed all the furniture by that point.)
Also, I solved the mystery of what happens when Bill and Andrew play Dinosaur Fight on the brand-new queen-size mattress. Two of the wooden support beams on the box spring snapped, and the metal frame itself is bent. Which explains why I thought the entire bed was dipping in the middle - IT WAS.
I don't know what's more annoying. That I was right and we've been sleeping on a broken bed for the last two years, or that Bil's not even here for me to gloat about it.
Charlie had spent most of the day with me, trying to get squashed by movers, and also trying to help dismantle bed frames (the guy doing them was very sweet about it, though; his hair was also super thick and curly so maybe they bonded). Mostly though, he was completely uninterested in a nap - so I didn't force the issue, because there wasn't anywhere to put him, anyway, and by the time it was time fo rme to sign papers, he literally fell asleep on my shoulder without any prompting whatsoever.
At which point I called our other babysitter, who luckily had just gotten home late the night before from her college-search-trip, and she came over and sat with him sleeping on the carpet in the upstairs room while I finished up with the movers and started to drag the remaining trash out to the curb. OMG SO MUCH TRASH. So many empty, discarded boxes that the movers didn't use! So many random bags of... I don't even KNOW, just stuff.
And all of the plants I couldn't palm off on anyone. I kept asking people to come by and take them, and they'd all say, "Oh, sure, maybe later." Well, the house was empty, our stuff was on its way to 95 North, there was no later, there was only now.
(No worries, plant-lovers. As we were pulling out, a little while later, all the children from next door were coming over, and carrying back pots of plants, which was just funny, since their mother was the worst of the, "Yes, yes, I'll be right over" responders.)
Anyway, we were approaching Zero Hour, mostly because Charlie woke up after barely an hour, and was clearly in a mood. I mean, it was just about 5pm, he'd been awake since 7am and hadn't napped all that long, I totally get it. But I still had to load the car and the cat and more importantly, Andrew was still unaccounted for. Mostly likely still at the pool, but I couldn't reach K on her cell, and they weren't answering their house phone, and I finally called the pool and got a lifeguard to go and tell her that it was time for Andrew to come home and LEAVE HOME, and then it was another twenty minutes and Charlie was still sobbing and there was no sign of Andrew (the pool is like, five minutes away), and at that point, I had half the neighborhood looking for Andrew.
Who finally shows up, on a borrowed bike, from the completely opposite direction from the pool. I have no idea. I still have no idea. But he was fine, and he was with K (which I figured - I totally trust her with Andrew, it was more the stress of not knowing where they were and not being able to get in touch - her phone died and she didn't have her charger) and he'd had a wonderful time and was super excited that it was time to go. So it was good.
And then I tossed the children in the car, and packed the cat, and did a quick walk-through of the house, and said goodbye to every room (I really did), and we drove away. And that was that. Traffic up to DC was great, only a few slow-downs between Fredericksburg and Quantico, and we got to the hotel at 8:30.
And walked into the lobby to find the fire alarm going off, and a couple of parents saying, amusedly, "Well, boys will be boys!" Apparently, a 7-year-old boy had pulled the fire alarm. God knows why. Yeah, okay, boys will be boys, whatever, but two fire trucks with about ten firemen, all geared up, showed up and were seriously annoyed, and I can't blame them, a fire at a packed hotel has got to be high on their list of Do Not Wants. They actually asked where the kid who pulled it was, and of course he'd long since disappeared.
(Boys will be boys! What bullshit. Honestly, if that was Andrew, I would have made him stay and let the firemen give him what-for. But even he knew that those boys had done a bad thing, and he understood why. Or at least, he was able to say why it was bad, which I'm going to count as the same thing, as far as Andrew's book.)
Anyway, the fire alarm turned off, we got to our room, utterly exhausted and stressed and carrying mountains of stuff because we had to drive around to get to the building and I didn't want to go back to get the luggage cart.
And there wasn't a crib in the room for Charlie. And after discussing with the front desk, there wasn't going to be a crib until Monday, because that's housekeeping's problem. So we all had to sleep in the oh-thank-goodness-it's-a-king-size-bed together, like a massive, squirmy, wide-awake-past-our-bedtime puppy pile. Charlie was delighted to be sleeping with Andrew, Andrew was delighted to be sleeping with me, I was delighted that the bed was actually really comfortable, even if sharing it with a 60-pound 6-year-old and a 25-pound toddler meant I only had a tiny sliver.
Oh, and the cat. She joined in, too, once she finished sniffing out the room. She'd been contained in a bathroom for most of the day - I didn't want to risk her crawling under a bush and never getting her out again, and then the three-hour car ride on top of that? Yeah. She's got good reason to sleep on every cushion in the place.
(She has also extracted her revenge by sleeping on my glasses this afternoon, while I frantically searched the entire apartment for them, because all my spares are packed. And there I was, being nice and not wanting to wake her up! She knew I wouldn't, too.)
Once the boys did manage to get to sleep, they were super cute. It was too dark to take a pic, but yeah - super cute.
Until they woke up at 6:30 this morning. Basically, every time I put Charlie in his carseat today, he fell asleep. Poor kid. I myself have made it this far only by the sheer grace of Starbucks S'mores frappucinos, and a Boston Creme donut the size of my hand.
(Now, though, I'm hitting the wall. I have had to retype every word in this letter at least twice. At least I make sense, grammatically-snoring, at least!)
Anyway, to bed. I would talk about today, but I'd rather the day END. Which requires me to first end this post.
DONE AND DONE.
So the kids and cat and I are settled in a hotel room outside of DC. Well, I say hotel room, I actually mean short-term furnished apartment rental, basically, in a complex full of short-term furnished apartment rentals to other government families in transition. Everyone seems to be adjusting pretty well - the cat especially, who has taken to sleeping on every cushion she can find. She is quite content. Our view is of a cemetery - a rather picturesque one, at that, and Andrew is kind of eager to go explore in it. I've seen dog walkers and runners in there in the evenings, so I think we might do it, once everyone's sleep schedule is more or less back on track.
To backtrack: Day two of packout was fairly short - the packers were done by 1:30, gone at 2, taking the Air and Consummables with them. Which left quite a lot of time to kill, and me somewhat annoyed because I'd really, really wanted to have an easy Sunday drive up to DC. But otherwise it went smoothly - though I didn't find the Netflix DVDs. Dammit.
(One of them was Deadpool, too. I really wantetd to watch that.)
I did get some writing done, though, so there's that.
Sunday was Day 3, and a whole new crew of mostly college-age guys who wrapped up the furniture and carried everything out. Sunday was a bit tricky, because I didn't have babysitting lined up for Andrew or Charlie, and couldn't use the babysitter from the previous days because Sunday. Two neighbors helped out, one by taking them both to brunch at the cafeteria, and the other by taking Andrew to the pool for swim lessons in the afternoon. Even so - I didn't even have a chance to crack open the laptop, because I spent the time trying to clean up the house behind the movers, and repack the car so that everything fit, and rescue the two empty bags I'd intended to take with us but which had been packed for storage the day before. (They were easy to find - the box was marked clearly. One was a collapsable duffel so big it'd fit me; the other is a travel bag for Charlie's carseat.)
(If I had the choice between finding the bags and finding the Netflix movies - I'd take the bags.)
It ended up taking just over six hours to load the truck - well, five, since they took a break for lunch halfway through, which I sure as heck wasn't going to deny them. Those boys were tired, I think a couple took naps on the living room floor. (They'd packed all the furniture by that point.)
Also, I solved the mystery of what happens when Bill and Andrew play Dinosaur Fight on the brand-new queen-size mattress. Two of the wooden support beams on the box spring snapped, and the metal frame itself is bent. Which explains why I thought the entire bed was dipping in the middle - IT WAS.
I don't know what's more annoying. That I was right and we've been sleeping on a broken bed for the last two years, or that Bil's not even here for me to gloat about it.
Charlie had spent most of the day with me, trying to get squashed by movers, and also trying to help dismantle bed frames (the guy doing them was very sweet about it, though; his hair was also super thick and curly so maybe they bonded). Mostly though, he was completely uninterested in a nap - so I didn't force the issue, because there wasn't anywhere to put him, anyway, and by the time it was time fo rme to sign papers, he literally fell asleep on my shoulder without any prompting whatsoever.
At which point I called our other babysitter, who luckily had just gotten home late the night before from her college-search-trip, and she came over and sat with him sleeping on the carpet in the upstairs room while I finished up with the movers and started to drag the remaining trash out to the curb. OMG SO MUCH TRASH. So many empty, discarded boxes that the movers didn't use! So many random bags of... I don't even KNOW, just stuff.
And all of the plants I couldn't palm off on anyone. I kept asking people to come by and take them, and they'd all say, "Oh, sure, maybe later." Well, the house was empty, our stuff was on its way to 95 North, there was no later, there was only now.
(No worries, plant-lovers. As we were pulling out, a little while later, all the children from next door were coming over, and carrying back pots of plants, which was just funny, since their mother was the worst of the, "Yes, yes, I'll be right over" responders.)
Anyway, we were approaching Zero Hour, mostly because Charlie woke up after barely an hour, and was clearly in a mood. I mean, it was just about 5pm, he'd been awake since 7am and hadn't napped all that long, I totally get it. But I still had to load the car and the cat and more importantly, Andrew was still unaccounted for. Mostly likely still at the pool, but I couldn't reach K on her cell, and they weren't answering their house phone, and I finally called the pool and got a lifeguard to go and tell her that it was time for Andrew to come home and LEAVE HOME, and then it was another twenty minutes and Charlie was still sobbing and there was no sign of Andrew (the pool is like, five minutes away), and at that point, I had half the neighborhood looking for Andrew.
Who finally shows up, on a borrowed bike, from the completely opposite direction from the pool. I have no idea. I still have no idea. But he was fine, and he was with K (which I figured - I totally trust her with Andrew, it was more the stress of not knowing where they were and not being able to get in touch - her phone died and she didn't have her charger) and he'd had a wonderful time and was super excited that it was time to go. So it was good.
And then I tossed the children in the car, and packed the cat, and did a quick walk-through of the house, and said goodbye to every room (I really did), and we drove away. And that was that. Traffic up to DC was great, only a few slow-downs between Fredericksburg and Quantico, and we got to the hotel at 8:30.
And walked into the lobby to find the fire alarm going off, and a couple of parents saying, amusedly, "Well, boys will be boys!" Apparently, a 7-year-old boy had pulled the fire alarm. God knows why. Yeah, okay, boys will be boys, whatever, but two fire trucks with about ten firemen, all geared up, showed up and were seriously annoyed, and I can't blame them, a fire at a packed hotel has got to be high on their list of Do Not Wants. They actually asked where the kid who pulled it was, and of course he'd long since disappeared.
(Boys will be boys! What bullshit. Honestly, if that was Andrew, I would have made him stay and let the firemen give him what-for. But even he knew that those boys had done a bad thing, and he understood why. Or at least, he was able to say why it was bad, which I'm going to count as the same thing, as far as Andrew's book.)
Anyway, the fire alarm turned off, we got to our room, utterly exhausted and stressed and carrying mountains of stuff because we had to drive around to get to the building and I didn't want to go back to get the luggage cart.
And there wasn't a crib in the room for Charlie. And after discussing with the front desk, there wasn't going to be a crib until Monday, because that's housekeeping's problem. So we all had to sleep in the oh-thank-goodness-it's-a-king-size-bed together, like a massive, squirmy, wide-awake-past-our-bedtime puppy pile. Charlie was delighted to be sleeping with Andrew, Andrew was delighted to be sleeping with me, I was delighted that the bed was actually really comfortable, even if sharing it with a 60-pound 6-year-old and a 25-pound toddler meant I only had a tiny sliver.
Oh, and the cat. She joined in, too, once she finished sniffing out the room. She'd been contained in a bathroom for most of the day - I didn't want to risk her crawling under a bush and never getting her out again, and then the three-hour car ride on top of that? Yeah. She's got good reason to sleep on every cushion in the place.
(She has also extracted her revenge by sleeping on my glasses this afternoon, while I frantically searched the entire apartment for them, because all my spares are packed. And there I was, being nice and not wanting to wake her up! She knew I wouldn't, too.)
Once the boys did manage to get to sleep, they were super cute. It was too dark to take a pic, but yeah - super cute.
Until they woke up at 6:30 this morning. Basically, every time I put Charlie in his carseat today, he fell asleep. Poor kid. I myself have made it this far only by the sheer grace of Starbucks S'mores frappucinos, and a Boston Creme donut the size of my hand.
(Now, though, I'm hitting the wall. I have had to retype every word in this letter at least twice. At least I make sense, grammatically-snoring, at least!)
Anyway, to bed. I would talk about today, but I'd rather the day END. Which requires me to first end this post.
DONE AND DONE.