life is good

It's been a stressful week, but not all stress is bad stress. Remember that last time I gave you move-in dates and such? Well everything got pushed up a day, so that basically left me less time to procrastinate.

We got a call on Monday from Housing that said if we could meet her at the end of the day on Tuesday, we could get our key early. Perfect! That meant I could call and have the movers come on Wednesday morning. Which meant that the cable/internet guy could come Thursday. Which was just perfect... in theory.

So I show up on Tuesday as promised and met our "nice" Housing Lady (remember her?), praying that nothing went wrong. But it did. To include Jim not being there. Which is my fault because I thought me and my trusty Power of Attorney could do it all. (If there's a military wife in the house, can I hear an "Amen"?) But I was wrong and in a panic called Jim 6 times in one and a half minutes. But to no avail. This could be a show-stopper, folks. Which is not good since at 8am the next morning, a big moving truck was showing up at the house, locked or not. I even called a friend to have her call her husband in case he was with Jim to have him tell Jim to get his rear-end down to Housing pronto.

And Jim did eventually make it. After one intense hour and keys that didn't work, Jim and I finally walked around our echo-y house and I fell in love with every corner of it.

Wednesday was the big day. This was the day that we finished our 4th move in nearly 5 years. (If there's a military wife in the house, can I hear an "Amen"?) Moving day is always a little nerve-racking for me since usually I'm there by myself when 3 big men show up with all my stuff. Sometimes they can be very condescending (read, bullies!) and insist they "know how to do it" and don't want you looking over their shoulder telling you to be careful with your stuff. (I'd already promised myself that if they made me cry, I was going to call Jim.) But, Praise the Lord, this was the best moving crew I've ever worked with. I think it's because I ran to McDonald's for lunch. My theory: if I take care of them, they'll take care of me. And three super-sized value meals later, none of my stuff was broken.

They left me with a house full of boxes at about 4, and I rushed around getting ready for my first FRG meeting at 5:30. Speaking of nervous! I had to talk in front of about 60 soldiers who were all told they HAD to be there after hours for this very important family meeting. Nobody wants to be there and it's my job to convince them that this is all worth while. (If there's a military wife in the house, can I hear an "Amen"?) The meeting wasn't great. I talked too fast. But it was over, and since this was the event of the week that I was dreading the most - I was happy.

At about 7:30pm Jim and I headed to our old house to get some stuff to the new house so we could sleep there the night. To me that meant, grab a toothbrush. But Jim was in this mood. He wanted to get as much stuff together as we could. And he was kinda motivated about it. I, however, was not and had been "moving" all day. All I wanted was OUR bed. So I was kinda grumpy.

After we're back at the new abode, we spend 10 minutes unpacking enough boxes to find our sheets and towels. We then spend the next 40 minutes trying to find our stinkin' shower curtain. But that never happened. Instead we were inventive and somehow didn't end up with water all over the bathroom floor the next morning. All of that credit goes to Jim since I still haven't showered since.... um... maybe, Tuesday?

So Yesterday was the big internet day. I waited all morning for the guy to come, and in 20 minutes, viola!, we had the internet. In our very own house! And I should mention that we are cheap and are paying only the very minimum for such luxuries. But for $5 extra a month we could also get basic cable (ie, 18 channels) so we decided to go for it. It saves us from buying one of those convertor boxes, right? On his way out, the guy tells me that he doesn't have a "filter" so instead we're just going to get all 78 channels. Um, okay.

And now, Today. All of our boxes are still staring at me so I know I have to tackle those. But this afternoon I leave for a women's retreat that I've been asked to speak at. My topic? Finding Joy in Transition - The Promise of Future Goodness. Appropriate, don'tcha think? Last night as Jim and I were mumbling to each other as we were falling asleep I mentioned I was nervous about it. He said, "Just talk like you blog and everyone will love you." I've decided that was the best advice I'd heard all week.

So it's Friday morning, and I've been up since 4:30am when Jim left for work. I couldn't fall back asleep so here I am drinking fruit punch, eating pretzels and blogging. I'm about to go take that much-needed shower and maybe find a Starbucks to camp out in and write out my talk for tonight. I'm still a little stressed, but at about 8:30pm tonight it will all be over and the week will be in the past. And tomorrow when I return from the retreat, I'll be greeted by the happiest red door I've ever known.