Bye-bye apartment living

(Suzanne’s working, so I’ll give an update until our feature writer is back from assignment. She’ll give more information and better details – I just want to capture a few thoughts for you)

Our last night in the apartment was exactly what you’d expect it to be. Go ahead, guess. Imagine the anecdotes we’ve told you already and try to form a picture of what it must have been like.

Got it? OK, let’s compare notes.

We woke up Wednesday morning and talked about staying over at the house Thursday night. We planned to leave the cats at the apartment, set up the bed at the new house, and enjoy one night of peace. So, Wednesday night was going to be our last night in the apartment. Who cares how it was going to go – it’s our last night! Make all the noise you want universe, because we’re outta here!

We put in a few hours at the house that evening and came home a little early. I was taking Thursday and Friday off work for the final push, so we took it a little easier Wednesday night. We came home, cleaned up, had some food, and relaxed for a few minutes. Eventually we headed to bed.

Around midnight, the sky exploded. A thunderstorm from the outer planes of hell erupted over our apartment and knocked us out of our bed and held us to the floor for a few minutes. Suzanne got up to check the radar, I tried to pull all the covers over my head and ears to keep sleeping. I couldn’t see the lightning flashes, but I could hear the momentary buzz in the fire alarm just before a bolt struck, so I knew when the crash of thunder was coming and how loud it would be. Eventually, the storm lessened and moved on, and Suzanne came back to bed. We fell back asleep.

Around 3:30 I woke up again. Not sure why, but definitely awake, so I got up to go watch TV and try to fall asleep again.

At 4:00 there was some clunking and clomping. I assumed it was the idiot upstairs late for his morning routine, but it continued and was coming from somewhere different. I realized it was coming from outside…

From another room there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from the couch to see what was the matter.
Away to the window I flew like a flash
Tore open the sliding door and accidentally ripped the sash…

“What the hell is going on?” I yelled at some guy standing outside our apartment. Some stranger was standing in the dark and I’m swearing at him.

“Oh, sorry. I’m disconnecting the cable and couldn’t get it loose. I’m really sorry, man. I’m almost finished.”

What the @#$#%@ is wrong with people!!!!!!

Yes, Time Warner sent their man out to disconnect on the appropriate day. Kudos to that fine company. At 4:00. In the morning. It was dark and not a creature was stirring.

Suzanne came out and I explained what happened. We both rolled our eyes and half-smiled that smirk we have now that encompasses every sleepless experience we’ve had at that apartment. Kind of like “so what else is new?”

We didn’t get too much more sleep after that. Eventually we "got up" and went to the house for a few hours, then spent the rest of the day moving the remaining stuff out of our apartment.

We did wind up spending Thursday night at the house, even though all our stuff wasn’t there. We had the bed set up and the TV and we had a little food. We crashed around 11:00. I think I was asleep before Suzanne actually made it to the bed. She wound up waking up sometime during the night – maybe she heard ghosts vacuuming above us, kinda like when somebody loses an arm but still feels an itch. I woke up at 8:00 and had had the best night’s sleep I’d had in quite some time.

We got the makeshift caffeine injectors set up and then started the rest of the move. We’re done. We’re finally in the house. The work is not done – we currently live in a construction zone – but it’s ours and we’re in. It’s a bit of a surreal experience because we’ve been working on it for so long without living here, but now it has all our stuff in it. I think once we go about some errands or go to work and come back directly here, it’ll start to sink in that it’s real.