Unpacking the Feels

Friends often mean well. Especially when they call to find out how your move is progressing. So why did I react so badly to a friend who called and asked “So are you finished unpacking yet?”

Seriously? What the heck is that supposed to mean? And so what if I am not? Maybe I am overacting? And maybe I dealing with feelings that have arisen as a result of this move…

For the most part we are unpacked, but there’s stuff that hasn’t found a home and I have to decide if I am even going to keep it! Some stuff was slightly damaged in the move and requires repair, I have three grown kids in elementary, middle and high school and a husband with a full time job. And maybe I am being stubborn and cutting off my nose to spite my face, but there have been some issues at home regarding this move that have made coping difficult for me. So no, I haven’t finished moving in. So freaking what!! I don’t care that it’s been almost two months and I still haven’t found a home for everything I own. I do not appreciate smarmy little phone calls like that.

A true friend knows that I don’t do things fast unless I am super motivated and have a vision. They also know that though I may multitask better than the operating system on my PC, I work better when I am either alone, or leading a group to do the task. I have to get used to a whole new area! Try to save some money, juggle not just the logistics of this house, but the house we are having to rent out back in VA!

I am not so sure we were as good friends as I thought we were because apparently there was a lot of judgement there just simmering under the surface that I was too unwilling to see. I want to think the best of my friends. And there are those that I know don’t call me asking me if I am finished moving in. There is one friend in particular who knows that I am struggling to adjust and that this move has been a battle since before the first box got packed.

In the movie “The Incredibles” Helen Parr (aka Elastigirl) calls her husband and tells him that the last box finally was unpacked, and they are officially moved in. According to him, it was three years that they had been living in that house. Three years!! I know it’s a movie, but come on!

Our first home, I didn’t feel like it was finally “done” until the 4th year after we had been living there. Then we sold that place and in our second home, we had been living there for three years and I was moved in but it was still very much a work in progress. There were many things that I was still in the process of changing when I got the word that we were going to move, again. So NO. I am not a quick mover. It takes me some time to make a house a home. I have tried, with some help, to do that here, but even as I arrange the furniture, I think that there has to be a better way, that something about how I have something placed that needs to be changed.

I got this phone call two days ago and it is still chapping my hide. I really did not appreciate it, and it wasn’t the first time. It was a series of similar calls over the last two months, the first one was about three days after I moved in. Three days! What exactly was I supposed to have accomplished in three days? I was still trying to find the sheets from my bedroom and the rest of my clothes! I was in a sea of boxes and nothing was labeled properly and no box was where it needed to be.

For example, I was looking for my crock-pot. It wasn’t in any of the boxes that had been marked “Kitchen”. It wasn’t in any of the boxes in the house. I looked in the boxes in the garage. It didn’t helped that they had stacked them four deep and three high all with the LABELS FACING THE WALL of the garage…who does that?!!! So little ol’ me had to take these boxes down and then try to find their label and open them to look inside, all the while keeping an escape route either back into the house or out of the front of the garage.

I finally found my crock-pot in a box labeled “Deep Fryer”. I don’t even own a deep fryer, and the crock-pot was the only cooking related item in the box. I can’t even begin to conceive what the thought process was for that doozy. Or how about the box labeled “Linens” out in the garage, that contained neither linens nor anything else that could have belonged in a bathroom or bedroom. What they could have labeled that it did have inside was “Stereo” or “Lamps”…the only thing in that whole box that might have fit into the category of “linens” was the one two foot square piece of canvas that was in the box. One piece of un-stretched canvas. You heard me right.

So, moving has been a literal pain in my behind. I am not tickled pink by the notion that on top of unpacking, I have holidays to decorate for…I am not doing it! Because it will be up for a day and then soon after I will have to take it all down. I haven’t even found a home for all of my dishes yet. So excuse me if I take my time and settle into this house slowly.