Are we or aren’t we?

This past week has been nail-biting and patience-challenging.

A month ago, in early June, we packed up my Santa Fe stuff and loaded it into a pod and got the townhome ready to rent.

We hadn’t wanted to book the pod pick-up ahead of time because we weren’t sure how long it would take us to get it loaded. But then when we did get it loaded and went to schedule the pod pick-up, they were booked 3 weeks out! I knew they would be booked up for a few days, but I didn’t anticipate my stuff would be sitting locked in a pod in the Santa Fe driveway for 3 weeks!

Our pod pick-up day wasn’t scheduled until July 8. Well, that gave me plenty of time to advertise the townhome and get renters lined up to move in. I set their lease to start on July 9.

The pod company is supposed to email and call the evening before pick-up day with the “service window” so you know when to expect them the next day. But the evening of July 7, I didn’t get my service window notification. I called them in the morning to find out when they were coming and they said they had to reschedule me to the next day. Reschedule! The new occupants are moving into the townhome and the pod was in the way!

The townhome only has a one-car garage and a narrow driveway. The pod completely fills the driveway and blocks the garage. How could my tenants even move in? I frantically texted my new tenant, asking when her moving truck (or pod) was scheduled to arrive. She said not to worry; her truck wasn’t coming until the morning of July 11. Whew!

But then later that day I got an email saying the pick-up and delivery of the pod had been rescheduled again – to July 10. Ok, that’s still in time for my tenants. But the evening of July 9, I once again didn’t get my service window notification. Uh-oh, in my experience, no service window notification means no service!

I called first thing the morning of the 10th, explaining that it’s been 3 days and the new occupants need to move in! They assured me that even though my online account didn’t show a service window, that I actually had a service window from 7 AM to 10 AM. Ok, well, thanks for the warning (it was already 8:00 by then).

Except the pod still didn’t come. By noon on the 10th I was really sweating it. What were my tenants going to do if the schedule was pushed out again? By that time, I had called this company so many times that I knew my way around their phone tree (don’t select “I want to know my service window” because that just sends you into an automated recital of the same things you can see online, which in my case did not include a service window!)

Then my pod finally, suddenly, arrived!

But meanwhile, we had another problem. On the morning of the 9th, our house sale appeared to fall apart. We were doing everything we could on our end, but ultimately the buyer has to be comfortable; it’s a big decision. John and I have once or twice backed out of a purchase ourselves (and not regretted it).

Our agent was quite sure the sale was not going to go through. She was so sure that she sent us the paperwork that we’d need to relist the house for sale again at the end of the week.

Meanwhile, back when I still thought we were closing on the 17th, I had hired a moving company to move all our furniture and decor out of the Placitas house on the 11th. Now my agent was telling me not to move it because she wanted it in there for when the sale fell through and we had to put the house back on the market.

Unless of course we actually did manage to close on the 17th, in which case we would need to have moved our belongings out of there. What to do? Were we going to close or not? If I cancelled on my movers, I would be out of luck. They didn’t have any more open time slots before the 17th, in the event that we actually closed on the sale. It’s nearly impossible to get decent movers on short notice this time of year.

And the last time I just “hired some guys” to help me move some stuff out of that house in Placitas, I caught them shoving my boxes down the stairs and catching them at the bottom (yes, seriously). They laid a ladder down on the stairs, hoping the boxes would roll down the rungs. Except not. The first guy would give a box a big shove at the top, watch it bounce down the stairs, and the other guy would pick it up at the bottom. They had quite an assembly line going until I told them to cut it out!

John doesn’t ever like to hire help anyway; it was all I could do to insist on the professional movers for this final set of furniture. After hurting my back a couple of weeks ago, I was determined not to move it all ourselves!

We were told we should hear back from our buyer the morning of the 11th, the same morning that we had reserved movers. So I had the movers start by unloading the Santa Fe pod, and delayed the decision about whether to move the Placitas furniture as long as I could. But finally, by mid-morning my movers were done unloading the Santa Fe pod in Albuquerque and ready to go up to Placitas and get everything from out there. So I called my agent and told her I was going ahead and moving our stuff out. And we’d just have to hope the house is actually selling.

The movers were great! Here they are, expertly backing a huge trailer up the long, long, steep driveway. It opens up to plenty of turning room at the top, but it is very narrow on the way up.

They did a very good job, carefully wrapping everything up and not marking the walls as they moved things out. Look at that beautiful, empty garage. (Sigh.) That’s the one in Placitas.

The garage in our new house is now completely full to the ceiling with junk (a fraction of which I actually want).

My house is in almost as bad of shape.

I suddenly have 2 houses worth of stuff piled in one, very modest-sized house. It’s a total zoo. I’m continuing to give stuff away, and I’m trying to unpack in as organized and efficient manner as possible (which is slowing me down considerably).

Since our garage is totally packed full, our truck, camper van, boat and two cars are piled up in the driveway and spilling into the street. Between that and the huge pod in front of the house, we look like everyone’s favorite neighbors, if you know what I mean.

But for the first time in a few years, all our stuff is in one place – well, not counting the two storage units, lol.

We are currently thinking we will close on the 17th, but we are not celebrating yet. It’s 3 long days from now and anything could happen. Stay tuned!