Moving

Honestly, I really tried not to buy much while we were at our first apartment. But then when it came to pack up our things, we discovered that we had about double the amount of stuff that we had arrived with. How is that possible?!

Well, we bought some sheets, some dishes, some candlesticks (remember I didn't pack mine), food, notebooks, a backpack, etc. That kind of stuff adds up quickly!

So we shlepped two suitcases each plus an over-the-shoulder bag over to our new apartment on Tuesday morning. I thought it would be relatively easy since we had taken that much with us to the airport. Unfortunately, I was most certainly mistaken. At the airport, we had easily and quickly found those little luggage trolleys. On Tuesday, much to my chagrin, we had no trolley to help us move.

During our journey to the new apartment, one of my bags continually tried to zig right when I was trying to get it to zig left. When that happened, naturally the other suitcase decided to wobble onto one wheel and nearly topple over. It didn't help that to zig right was for it to potentially roll into the busy street or scratch a parked car.

At one point, my klutziness struck. While walking down a busy street, my shoulder grazed a big, green garbage bin. Since the garbage bin was on wheels, it started to head all-too-quickly to the street. I totally felt like I had set off a line of dominos.

I quickly visualized the potential danger -- while trying to control my erratic suitcases, my shoulder grazes a garbage can, the garbage can then rolls into the street in front of a myriad of oncoming cars, the driver of the closest car slams on his breaks to miss the big garbage can, which causes the car to swerve into oncoming traffic and hit another car, the car behind the first car has no time to stop so he also slams on his breaks and hits both the car in front of him and the garbage bin. Many people are injured while I stand there looking dumbfounded with my two bags.

With my heart racing and the garbage can not yet in the street, I dropped my two bags and reached with all my might to stop the garbage bin from entering the street so that this huge mess wouldn't really happen. But I was too late. It was like a movie scene shown in slow motion. Although I had dropped my two suitcases, I had to turn to reach for the garbage bin. I made a desperate lunge, but I missed the bin by just inches. All I could do then was watch.

I hate to admit it, but I let out a sound of pure terror. I didn't want to be the cause of a huge accident.

By the biggest miracle, the garbage bin that was rolling at quite a quick pace, stopped suddenly short of the street. I have no idea what stopped it. The path looked smooth and clear. There were no sticks or rocks that would have slowed it down. I have no idea what halted its progress, but I am so very, very glad that it did.

Anyway, then we dragged the suitcases the rest of the way and lugged them up four flights of stairs -- not fun!

After being completely exhausted by our first load, I just couldn't handle doing that again. Jean was wonderful enough to loan us her three, big duffel bags and so we stuffed those with our remaining stuff, cleaned the apartment, hailed a taxi, and then got dropped off in front of our new building. Let's just say I preferred our second mode of transportation.

Then the three of us lugged the remaining stuff upstairs. It took us a few trips but we finally got it all upstairs. I am just so thankful that we have nearly a year until we have to do it all again!