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I'm back and writing this in my new office!

Our move two weeks ago didn't go quite as smoothly as we'd hoped.

The 8:30 start we'd been promised was put off till 11:15 when three movers finally arrived still weary from working till 2:00 a.m. the night before. They were complimentary enough at first, congratulating us on our use of genuine packing boxes and saying they'd never seen anyone so organized. But their attitude soon went sideways when the boxes turned out to be heavier than they thought (many books) and they encountered some hard-to-fit-in-furniture.

It all stretched into a very long day. Things slowed to almost a standstill between 4 to 5 as the guy in charge was sure all our stuff wouldn't fit on the truck. He phoned a couple of times for another truck (which was never forthcoming). Then they all seemed to lose patience with the job and each other. The result was lots of discussing and arguing back and forth between the head guy and his assistant about how to load the truck and some testy moments between the head guy and the extra he'd called in for the day. That young man had no lack of attitude and was, by then, fed up with the whole scene muttering to us about how he and the buddy he works with at his usual moving company get into a rhythm so that they keep working without having to talk over every little thing and that it was a bad idea to feed everyone (E. had bought them pizza for lunch) because hungry people are just more motivated to work etc. etc. (It was at this point I went into the almost empty living room and started to pray - hard!) They finally finished loading sometime after 7:00 and even managed to squeeze everything in.

Then it was down the road 30 minutes to our new home to unload. That began spunkily enough. But when it came time to lug my massive desk upstairs the whining started again. The movers did eventually get the three most difficult pieces (including the old upright piano) in place after removing doors and taking one section off the computer desk to get it into the necessary room.

Meanwhile I'd spent the whole day cleaning my old home and then, when we arrived at the new one, got out the bucket and rags to begin again. By 12-ish (midnight) when E. went out to get the movers some more food I was not only bone tired, but my back was going into spasms. The mattress and box spring were in the bedroom so I went to bed while the chatter and clatter carried on -- much to the chagrin of our new neighbors; one of whom came out on his balcony and disgustedly told the movers that it was late and to cut the chatter (oh dear).

Finally our tired movers came to us with another plan. They would unload everything that was left into the garage, then come back the next day to move the furniture and boxes to their specified floors and rooms. By this time everyone was so weary, we agreed. And so about 2:00 a.m., after our furniture and boxes had all been safely stowed in the garage, our nightmare move finally ended as the truck left, beeping its loud and annoying backup signal the whole way out of the complex.

So we've been trying to impose some order on this new space for the last two weeks. This is my office before I tackled it.


My office today. The perfect decor for a children's writer, wouldn't you say? It will be changed soon.

Against our better judgement, we had paid these boys for all the work they'd done, and were skeptical they would actually come back and finish. To their credit they did -- not the next day but three days later on Monday.

Altogether, it's an experience I don't want to go through very soon (-- would you believe ever?) again!