Caveat: Forgive the ridiculous spacing. I fought long and hard but the internet is winning. I’m too tired.

WOW it’s been a long time since I did a Week in Review! And look, I’m still Fashion Schlub, cuz…A GAZILLION THINGS ON THE TO-DO LISTS RIGHT NOW. This was a HECK of a week…let me just make a suggestion to anyone considering MAKING ALL THE MAJOR LIFE CHANGES AT ONE TIME: Don’t. Ha ha.

 

But if you ARE, then:
* start preparing earlier than you think you need to
* keep thorough “overall” and “day by day” to do lists
* accept all the help that is offered to you

 

Because however early you’ve started preparing, it wasn’t early enough. You need to get rid of more stuff than you thought you did, handle more “issues” than you can even imagine, more things will go wrong than you would expect, and you will be So Very Tired.

 

I have a good friend who shared something with me many years ago, when friends of HIS shared this with him, because they had made this same mistake. They advised him to never make two major life changes at the same time. I think they were retiring, selling their home, and moving across the country. Any ONE major life change is a lot – combine two or three (or ALL of them, in my case) and it’s just downright, well, idiocy, ha ha. I MADE it, but I wouldn’t advise it.

 

And here’s what The Week from Hell looked like:

 

MONDAY, JULY 24

 

TSA Precheck: I had signed up for this online and the earliest appointment I could get was in 6 weeks, literally days before I left NY.  I got to the Staples like a dozen towns away right on time for my 10:50am appointment. I went to the check-out line with the TSA Precheck banner and stood there for a good five minutes, listening smugly to the cashier explaining to someone on the phone that no, there are no walk-ins, they must have an appointment, no, there is no way around that, no no no and I was like, oh, that irresponsible person waiting til the last minute, they’re not like ME, who has it all under control…smugness and self-righteousness just oozed out of me. When he got off the phone he directed me to a cubicle in the center of the store. Off I went, Got It All Under Control Bettye, to tick another item off my To Do list…I said I was there for the 10:50 appointment…he said there was no 10:50 appointment (uh)…I said wait, I have the email, handed him my phone and he looked at me and said, “your appointment is 10:50…tomorrow” (oh). Oops.

 

Ms. Smug’n’Responsible had to beg Michael the TSA Pre-check guy to take me today even though he was just walking out for his break cuz…I was out of time please please please. He harumphed and plopped down in his chair and we proceeded to break the computer 🙁 Poor Michael. My fingerprints wouldn’t scan, my photo wouldn’t save…finally he had to reboot the computer and we had to start all over again, Michael checking his watch every 15 seconds. But finally we finished, I thanked Michael profusely and made a mental note to send him a thank you note and gift card. Which hasn’t happened yet, but it’s still on the list.

 

The day went more smoothly after that: I met up with a friend mid-way between TSALand and Car Drop Off to return something, then I dropped off my car at the dealer that had bought it, they gave me the check and had an Uber pick me up to take me to the car rental place. I spent at least ten minutes figuring out the new-fangled rental car (my car was a 2010, nothing new-fangled about it), went to the bank to drop off the car check before I lost it, then headed home to load larger-than-my car up several times with things for the dumpster and Savers (Savers is a donation center like Salvation Army).

 

Goodbye, faithful friend!

Then continued going through closets, drawers, cabinets, and piles. How was I not done with all this yet, just two days before moving?? Reread paragraph three.

 

Slept fitfully in the concrete life raft (aka air mattress).

 

TUESDAY, JULY 25
Thankfully, a very good, long time friend came over and helped me load the car up several more times with trash and stuff for Savers, and then kept me company for all my errands: post office, cashing in my jar of change, dropping off the modem and router at the cable company, retrieving my favorite lamp that the removal company had accidentally taken, etc.

 

Guess how much??

At the cable company I had to call to cancel the service before the people in the office would accept the equipment. The guy on the phone kept offering me lower and lower rates even though I said I was moving…leaving the state, the country, no I did not want to place a hold on the account, no, no one in the home was interested in keeping the account, I was like DUDE – does Optimum have service in South Korea?? No. No, it does not, he said…but I can offer you the low low rate of…and I was like ARE YOU JUST PLAYING WITH ME NOW??? Ha.

 

Then I was up till 2 o’clock in the morning doing all the final things, and finally getting to my clothing! I mean over time I’ve let this and that go and I’ve prided myself (Ms Smug) on not having so many clothes, but now it’s down to the final countdown and it was brutal. I wanted everything to fit into two tubs: a summer tub and a winter tub And both tubs kept spilling over so I had to go through it all again, and make really hard cuts. I FINALLY managed to get my entire wardrobe down to these two tubs. Which is STILL too much but I was out of time, so I will have to continue culling from Katie’s in Florida.

 

All my clothes, minus two coats that are in the nested suitcases.

WEDNESDAY-THURSDAY, JULY 26-27

 

THE DAY HAD COME.

 

I got up at 5am to start taking more car loads of stuff to the dumpster and Savers. After the first dumpster stop I realized my hand was bleeding and I had to MacGuyver a slipper into a blood stopper. Seemed pretty sanitary. Guh.

 

After the last run of drop-offs, I showered, grabbed a hot dog, then went to the return the rental car and get Ubered back home so I could finish the last-minute things. Katie texted when she landed and got to the car rental place there, saying the rental car was smaller than she’d expected…I googled it and it was a LOT smaller thann expected and I had to start doing emergency triage on ALL MY BELONGINGS because there was no way it was fitting into a Toyota Corolla Cross compact nonsense of an SUV 🙁

 

If youre thinking, wait, wasn’t she only taking two suitcases to Korea, and Katie holding onto two big plastic tubs for her, you’d be correct. In the END, that’s all there’ll be. But to Florida I was also taking two medium-sized tubs of things for Katie, a milkcrate full of books, a tub of technology, and too many boxes to count of photographs and slides to be gone through and scanned while I was in Florida. There was a LOT more culling to be done during my time in Florida. But now…not all of it was going to fit.

 

Fortunately, again, other people came to the rescue…The Ex and his daughter (my niece) came to see Katie in the 2.5 hours she’d be in NY and THEY came in two big trucks…so I split everything into categories: 1) things that absolutely had to go to Florida with me and Katie 2) things that could stay in New York, and be fostered by someone until I figured it out where they needed to go and 3) things to just take to the trash or dump, because there was just nowhere else for them.

 

And while seven hands (the ex has an injured paw) are better than four, things got a little chaotic for the carrying out to three different vehicles, and the whole trip down I kept thinking did the folder with my passport get into this car? Where’s the cement rabbit? Is my pillow going to the dump? So it all got additionally stressful. I’ve now been here three days and I’m STILL not sure what made it here and what didn’t – and where everything else went that was left in NY.

 

The four of us had a quick lunch before we headed out on the road for our “19-hour drive” (which turned out to be a 24-hour drive) from Centerport New York to St. Petersburg Florida. There was so much stuff in the car that our seats were both pushed all the way forward which is just not an ideal way to take such a long car trip but we managed. We took turns driving. Basically I was driving in the light and she was driving in the dark, except at some point in the morning as we were getting close my eyes were rolling around in my head and I kept feeling myself veering into other lanes, so she took over for the last two hours.

 

We made lots of stops and peed in lots of places. Some places even would have announcements while we were inside the convenience shop part, going “NUMBER 46! NUMBER 46! Your Shower is Ready!” I think that’s for the truck drivers but someone said you get a free shower with every fill up and I was like damn we filled up like five times, I would have loved a shower!

 

After so many stops, a short nap somewhere, and watching dogs in hot cars in parking lots til owners came out, we arrived in Saint Pete, exactly 24 hours after we started. We ordered some sushi delivery and then I was in bed by 2:30. She woke me up around 5:30 for some dinner and I was back in bed at 8:30.

 

FRIDAY, JULY 28

 

You know when you see a tick that’s so engorged with blood and you feel like if you just touch it it’s gonna pop and blood is going to spew everywhere? I felt like that except water. Everything was so puffy-full: my feet, my ankles, my hands, my face, I wanna stick pins in me all over the place and just drain it all out. I felt stiff and sore and tired and slow and old.

 

The day was pretty low-key. I lazed, did laundry, napped, made a half-hearted attempt at organizing things, went to the market for food, and watched the dogs when Katie went out to make sure they didn’t dig their way into the neighbor’s yard to visit their tortoise friend. I did not day-drink as my (in a previous life) supervisor suggested.

 

Early to bed.

 

SATURDAY, JULY 29

 

I tried to be a little productive and get back to my To Do list. #1 was change my address so my mail would start coming to me, with all the goings-on, who knows what’s being sent to me: Korean Consulate, Social Security, Korean University, TSA, etc. I ran into a problem though that it needed to charge a credit card like a dollar, but none of my credit cards matched the address I was changing to. So one at a time  changed my credit/debit card addresses than trying at the USPS site again, but no, even though it said they were changed on the credit card pages when I went back to the USPS page they’re like nope it’s still not a match. I was stuck in that loop for a long time and finally said I’ll try it again later, because it was gonna make my head explode.

 

We ran some errands and took the dogs to a nearby hot park for a walk. Fun Fact: you can put the word “hot” in front of any noun in Florida and it will be appropriate.

 

Ate, slept.

 

SUNDAY, JULY 30

 

The day of rest:
    •    Lunch
    •    Pool
    •    Read
    •    Napped

 

I finally had a clear enough brain/heart to go through the gifts that people had given me on the last day of work. Everyone was really great. They wrote me the sweetest notes, they made me cry, they all wished me well. As much as you might dream of never having to work again…you do create wonderful bonds with people at work and I will miss seeing my good friends every day.

 

In the evening we went to a K-pop pop-up that Katie had found on Instagram. Fun Fact: It’s too hot to do things in Florida. We quickly looked at the vendor booths: kpop jewelry, tee shirts, photo cards, etc…then she got in line for a food truck and I got in a separate line for beverages. We stood in our respective lines for over an hour, sweating sweating. Hot sweating. It was too much. It’s too hot for me. I don’t do hot. My summer life is going from air conditioned apartment to air conditioned car to air conditioned office, and repeat at the end of the day. I don’t DO outside in the summer. October. In OCTOBER I do outside.

 

Korea will be the death of me. People keep asking me what the weather there is like.

 

Oofah. I’m still plugging away. 23 days til I leave. I hope I’m ready!

 

Sorry this was so so long and not very fun…but that’s what the week was. So so long and not very fun.

 

Hope y’all are staying cool in this ridiculous heat! Maybe this week I’ll find my camera and try to make some pretty pictures. Or…stay inside in the air conditioning. It’ll be a surprise.

 

xoxo Bettye (who is no longer a New Yorker)