Resting Up From Vacation

It is the first day back to work after using my vacation last week to move into our new house. Thank goodness.

I need the rest.

The bad news is I have another week off next week.

It’s been a long week of slogging back and forth from the new house to the old house – still picking up the remainders of what the movers didn’t.

I fell down our new basement stairs once. I could swear my heels touched my shoulders. I screamed quite loudly. Have you ever thought you were on the last step but you weren’t?

I did that with about five steps to go.

I was carrying Darlene’s favorite framed pictures at the time.

As I laid there, I moaned “it’s broken”. I was talking about my leg. Dar thought I was talking about the frames.

“It better not be!” she growled. I still thought she was talking about my leg too!

She pulled the best picture out of the box – “No, it’s fine”, she said as she pranced away happily.

I untied my legs from their new pretzel configuration and was delighted to find that I did not break anything, only sprained my ankle and twisted my bad knee, And the only nurse in the house just pranced away happy.

Both the ankle and knee swelled right up. But unfortunately I could still walk. I got a reprieve that afternoon, and tried out the new pool with ice on both joints. But the next day we went right back at it. And it got hot again.

My Mum is coming up from Pensacola for a visit. She arrives Thursday night. She is anxious I believe to see the new place. And we have everything all ready for her.

Except a bed.

We took this opportunity to move my youngest from her Dora the Explorer toddler bed, into the cabin bed that my eldest had. And we moved my eldest up to the double bed we kept in what we called “The Grandma’s Room”.

Unfortunately we have to wait until this weekend before we can replace that bed with a new pillow topped one for Grandma.

I also put my old TV in my eldest’s room. I plugged in the cable for it, and the cable TV was still working. We are trying a satellite company now, so we did not move our cable.

The girls were very excited. They spent all their free time in my eldest’s room watching TV – their own TV.

Then the cable guy turned off the service.

And to my daughters, I am an “Indian giver”.

I apologize for using this term, I know it is derogatory in nature, but I do not know of another way to describe someone who gives a gift and then takes it back. And if I am not mistaken, the term truly means what the white men did to the Native Americans, they gave them something, and then they took it back.

Notice I used the royal “They”.

But I digress.

So now I have to call the cable company, and get them to turn on the cheapest service they have.

My Mum shipped up a package for my youngest daughter’s fifth birthday. She shipped it UPS. She asked us not to open it until she arrived.

When it came, Darlene’s Mum received it from the UPS driver. It was no longer a rectangular shape. It was now a triangle. The driver quipped “It looks like it’s been around the world”.

I opened the box, and everything is Ok.

But the morale to my entire moving experience is:

“If you hire a service – be it movers or UPS delivery, they likely won’t do a good job. But when you decide you no longer need a service, like cable TV, just watch how quickly and efficiently they discontinue it for you.”

Or …

The path of least resistance is most often followed by those that choose not to leave.