micheleandtom.com

Our car broke down on our drive to the coast today.

As we pulled onto Highway 101 in Tillamook, 100 yards from the Tillamook Cheese Factory, our car shuddered and died. It quickly began to smell like gasoline. As Tom called AAA, I called my parents and walked around the car. I looked under the car and saw a gusher of gasoline coming out from underneath–even with my limited knowledge of cars, I knew this wasn’t good. (Big Sigh)

In Tom’s discussions with AAA, they told him that they would have to call the local fire department before our car could be towed because of the presence of gasoline. They also advised us to evacuate the car and wait outside. Meanwhile, my father drove into Tillamook and picked up the girls and all of our bags, etc. AAA left Tom and I with a number to call “if we were not happy with the response time” of the fire department and towing company. (We have since learned that this actually means “we didn’t reach anyone on the telephone and left messages instead, so if no one comes out to get you, call this number.”)

Well, an hour and a half and several more telephone calls later, no one had come. (AAA seemed a little concerned that they couldn’t reach the fire department on the telephone.) Tom and I were sitting in a field located next to the car, a blanket wrapped around us, freezing in a damp fog with the wind whipping down the road.

Finally, we gave up on AAA and called the towing company directly with our AAA case number and didn’t mention anything about gasoline and/or the fire department.

About ten minutes later Nick, sporting a baseball cap studded with large metal spikes, rescued us. He said, “heck, I wish I had known you were here…I’m about a mile up the road and could have been here in 5 minutes!”

Our car is now parked at the local shop, and hopefully Andy will be taking a look at it tomorrow, if he has time of course!

I hate movers. I love movers. Yes, I have a love/hate relationship with movers.

I love it when they come to your house and pack up all of your stuff in one day. I hate it when they break your cherished crap and try to get out of paying you for the items they destroy.

My last run-in with movers involved our move from our house here in Portland to the condo we are renting in Portland. We paid a national moving company to pack, move, and unpack our belongings. The moving day started well. Tom was stationed at the house to supervise the move out (they had two crews working) and to ready the house for the new buyers, and I was at the condo moving in boxes and putting stuff in closets and drawers that the movers unpacked and set on the floor.

Halfway through the day, one crew went home. Then everything unraveled.

We got a call that Zelda was sick and we had to go pick her up from school and take her to the doctor (ear infection). As soon as the appointment was over, Tom had to go back and pick up Zoe at the end of school. So he was out of action for most of the afternoon. About the time Tom got back, he had to leave again for a class. Upon his departure, it became apparent that the crew that had left the job half way through the day had screwed the remaining moving crew because they put everything in the condo in the wrong order–we were hemmed in and couldn’t move, unpack or place furniture. A large chunk of stuff had to be moved out and then replaced in the condo.

On top of it all, the movers had underestimated the amount of hours the job would take, and the crew chief tried to pull a fast one and get out of the scope of work they had agreed to. When I wouldn’t let him weasel out of the job, he started opening my boxes and throwing the stuff out of them onto the floor in one big dump

I wigged out. I had a vomiting kid with a high fever, I had been moving and unpacking for 10 hours side-by-side with the various moving crews, Tom was gone, movers were throwing my stuff around the house, and some asshole was trying to tell me he didn’t want to finish his job because he had somewhere to go. (He pulled the passive aggressive male strategy of “I’m going to be so awful she will let me off the hook because she’s a woman and won’t want to deal with a man being truly icky.”)

I got so mad I dropped about a million f-bombs and told the crew chief he was a **&$$%@##. The kids freaked out and stayed in their room. I called Tom and told him he “better get his butt home” and hung up the phone. (He and Ian still laugh about that telephone call. Tom turned to Ian and said, “uh-oh.”)

In the end, the movers stayed and finished their job. The worker bees apologized to me for their crew chief being a complete tool and thanked me for working so hard with them side-by-side. Needless to say, it has become a funny family story that we all laugh about. (Well, I’m still working on the laughing part.)

That experience, along with our other two cross-country sojourns (don’t worry, I won’t tell those stories), has made me rethink this next move. (Yes, that means I will be posting in the future regarding my current moving and storage strategies! Woo hoo!!)

We got our tickets in the mail…I guess this means that we are really going! Looking at the “Moving to Argentina” to-do list, and you know there is one, is making me feel a bit overwhelmed. Yikes. We have to sell our cars, sell some household crap, move remaining household crap into storage, change all account addresses, cancel subscriptions, notify everyone, figure out voting, learn Spanish (hee hee), get a safety deposit box, figure out continuity of health insurance, get passports in order, blah blah blah.

Heck, just washing and detailing our cars so we can sell them will take forever (we aren’t exactly obsessive about keeping our cars clean).

I know we seem to be long on cutting ties, and short on planning…but we do have a plan!

When we arrive in Buenos Aires, we plan on living in a short-term furnished rental (these are targeted toward foreigners, are somewhat plentiful, and are expensive). Then we must immediately begin figuring out where the heck the girls will be going to school. Once we get that settled, we will then look for a long-term unfurnished rental somewhere near the girls’ school so we can walk or easily bus/cab to school. (It seems that apartments that are unfurnished are more affordable because they aren’t necessarily targeted toward foreigners.)

From a distance, the neighborhood we are most interested in is Belgrano. You know how that is though… . It could be like Denver all over again (another place we wanted to move to from a distance).