Tuesday, November 6th

Hasn’t been much time for posting.. hasn’t been much time for anything but work and unpacking. But I promised the story of my arrival in Virginia

I drove down to Virginia last Tuesday. Long drive.. cat in the car crying at me most of the drive and couldn’t wait to get here. Although it was a long drive, it was pretty easy. No traffic, no delays, none of the usual problems I run into when I travel somewhere. It was easy…too easy.. I should have wondered when the bottom would drop out.. umm.. or perhaps the ceiling!

Got to the townhouse and was getting everything set up to get Cutie out of the car when I thought I would walk upstairs to the bedroom. Nice drive, nice clean townhouse.. nice ceiling caved in all over the bedroom walls and floor.

It turns out Virginia had an end to their long draught the weekend before I got here and had a huge downpour for most of the weekend. It also turns out there was a nice little hole in the roof right above my bedroom. There was wet drywall, insulation and just general junk all over the walls and in huge piles on the floor. The leasing office was closing in 10 minutes so I got to my phone as quickly as I could and gave them a call. Of course, maintenance was already gone for the day.. but they promised to get on it first thing in the morning. At least the grounds maintenance guy was nice enough to come and clean up the stuff that was all over the place.

No ceiling in the bedroom, no maintenance on duty and the movers would be here in about 15 hours. Nice!

Then I went downstairs to the den. I have no fricking clue what I was looking at, but there was a HUGE ( and I mean HUGE) bug in the downstairs bathroom. It looked like a cross between a spider and a giant, brown grasshopper and had 3 black stripes on its back. Mom has seen them.. she can attest to it. HUGE and very strange looking. Must be a Virginia thing. The leasing office had told me they were having the complex sprayed for crickets.. this was a bionic crickett if that’s what it was.

At least there were no problems with the main floor!

I spent the first night sleeping on the floor, dreaming about giant hairy crickets everywhere.. the next day I got my furniture, and Mom arrived.. at least we had couches and chairs to sleep on… and more dreams about giant crickets with huge, sharp teeth.

I will give the maintenance guy some credit though. He got the roof repaired and my ceiling rebuilt/drywalled/painted in 3 days. He really did an excellent job.. and it was very nice to be able to put the bed together and not dream about giant crickets. Even if Mom and I had to struggle with the bed instead of just being able to have the movers do it.

Mom was a huge help getting stuff unpacked, and there is little left to do now. THANKS MOM.

We had a good weekend, for the most part.. even though some of it was filled with crying and missing Kerrie a whole lot. When they first asked me to come here I said “no”, because I wouldn’t leave her. She told me I had to go, because she was coming with me. She must be here, in some way.. every time I went to say something to Mom about the second bedroom I kept calling it “Kerrie’s Room.” It wasn’t even intentional.. it would just pop out of my mouth. Even when I tried to say “The other bedroom” it would be “Kerrie’s Room”. So.. Kerrie’s room it is. I wonder if they will let me paint it purple and green? She wanted a purple and green room, and Mom had her room painted that way at home, but then everything went wrong.. She only got to see the room one time at home. It wasn’t until this move that I noticed that all my bedroom linens and things are purple and green. It has been for at least 4 years.. I just never noticed it before.

Kerrie I will decorate that room any way you want me to.. It’s your room.. or you can share mine.