All Packed up and Nowhere to go

My parents have given me many gifts, but this week, I am tremendously thankful to them for the gift of my sense of humor. Growing up in our house, we always used a sense of humor to cope when things were not going quite right. Don't get me wrong, when serious issues arose, they were dealt with in a matter befitting the situation, but I remember there always being some slight humor about even the gravest moments. That is exactly what I needed to get through this past week.

Being a self proclaimed Type A personality, I wage a constant battle within myself to focus on what I can control and what I cannot. The one thing I was unable to control this week was my movers. To preface what happened, Frank, Jan, Larry and I spent the entire day on Saturday packing and we continued into Sunday. Monday I double checked the inventory for each box, made sure it was numbered on all sides and sealed them all. Tuesday I typed up the inventory list so that I could e-mail it to Clarke, our moving coordinator.

Every day I e-mailed Clarke and let him know that we needed to know the approximate time the movers would be here. When Tuesday rolled around, he informed me that the driver should have called and given me a time window. I told him I hadn't heard anything. Well, it gets to be around 8:30 PM and Clarke called me. He let me know that the moving truck broke down in Miami and he was not confident that the movers would come at all on Wednesday. The dispatcher was supposed to get back to him about when they could get to us. Hmmm....broke down? I'm thinking that perhaps they just wanted to spend the night in Miami for some reason that I can't write about because I want my blog to be suitable for young readers. Maybe they just wanted another dinner at some awesome Cuban restaurant on South Beach. I probably would too if all I did all day was bust my hump hauling people's crap.

Instead of screaming at Clarke, which I really wanted to do, but knew it would be unproductive, I gave him a few days to figure it out. Friday came along and we still hadn't heard from him. I wrote him another e-mail about how disappointed we were in the planning of our move, that we appreciated his communication but expected that our invoice would reflect the problems that we experienced with scheduling. Larry answered up the phone when Clarke called about an hour after we sent the e-mail. We all got on speaker phone for this conference call and learned that the movers would now be coming on Tuesday between 1 and 4.

To this I just had to laugh. There was a certain sense of freedom gained from realizing that I control me, not the movers or Clarke or the dispatcher. I could only control me, my actions and my feelings - and I chose to laugh. We might be camping out without our pots, pans and books for a little bit longer once we get into our premanent apartment in Perth, but hey, it will just be an excuse to go out an explore a new restaurant, cafe or book shop. This close to our departure date I need to start keeping things in perspective.