I like to think of myself as a good story teller, one who tends to exaggerate only to make the story better, but the story I am about to tell you is not exaggerated...its the truth!
I was supposed to start my new job on Monday August 18th, so I had planned to fly in on Sunday so I could be all settled in before the "big" day. On our way to the airport on Sunday my old co worker called me to tell me that my flight was cancelled (she had my old work phone that was receiving the alerts), ugh...we turned back around and went home. Luckily AA had put me on the afternoon flight. So, later in the day we headed back to the airport to try it again. Mind you I am lugging a 47.5lb suitcase with 2.5 weeks worth of clothing and every single piece of underwear I own! I get to the airport, check in and go sit down at the gate to enjoy my dinner. After a few minutes of not seeing the name "Cleveland" on the board, I decided to look into it. Dammit...they changed my gate! And of course I wasn't getting the alerts, my old co worker was. Not only did they change my gate, but they changed my terminal...awesome! Now, I am at the right gate, schmoozing with some of the other travelers waiting for the flight only to learn of the complete turmoil most all of the travelers had been through that day with the crazy thunder storm Dallas had earlier that morning. Anytime there is crazy weather in DFW, it effects all of the flights. At this point it was like 7:00 and my flight was supposed to have left at 5:30...and the airline has my large suitcase....with all my underwear. By 9:30, I had enough and asked the gate agent if he thought the flight was actually going to leave that night, and he couldn't tell me for sure, so I just had Derek come pick me up and figured I would try again the next day. The last thing I wanted was to get into Cleveland after midnight and expect to be bright eyed and bushy tailed for my first day. My new boss was very supportive and understanding. Of course at this point, my children are completely confused why they have taken mommy to the airport twice now, and I never leave?!?
Tuesday morning, panty free and looking cute with some left over shorts, an A&M t-shirt, no make up and ratty hair...I got on a flight to Cleveland to start my new journey. So far the job is great, my new team has been nothing but supportive and so welcoming! Now, I tell you the crazy flight story to tell you about our real fiasco and I will attempt to not confuse you, or lose you...
While I am up in Cleveland, I decided to take on the job in the relocation process of finding temporary living for my family while we are building our new home. As part of the process, my company uses other vendors to help you along the way. So, the "temp" living company provided me with an option (apartment) to consider. I immediately said yes, but their response was that they were waiting on an "approval" for my family of four to be able to have a 2 bedroom apt?? After a few days of waiting on this "approval", I finally asked my boss to send an email to "approve" it. At this point, that apartment had been leased out to another family. Grrr! So, they provide me with another apt, but this one is 3 bedroom....you guessed it...had to wait for approval....by the time they got around to it, GONE! OMG! Seriously, people??!! At this point, I have come upon my first weekend in Cleveland alone, and I was really excited to have my own car (which had been delivered) to go explore and poke around. I popped out of bed Saturday morning, got dressed and zipped down to the parking garage, got in my car, turned the key...and nothing. My damn car won't start!! I got someone from the hotel to come jump my car, and off I went only to get to Avon (the city we are moving to) and have my car die....again at the Starbucks! Ugh! So, what would any person do who knows nobody in the area??? Call her realtor to come jump her car! Car starts, get battery replaced, and I am on my way!
Now starts my second week of work, and you might be asking "did you find an apartment" NO! At this point, I am livid because Derek and the kids were coming that Friday and I needed somewhere to go. I get a call that miraculously the complex we wanted to be in had an apartment come available on September 2nd!! Woohoo! We are in! Then literally 30 minutes later, I received a call from them saying, oops, we messed up, we meant September 12th, not 2nd!!! At this point, I have cried buckets of tears and ripped a lady by the name of Lisa's head off for the stress of this whole situation. Poor Lisa. We decided to suck it up and take the one available on the 12th and hang in a hotel for a couple of weeks. How bad could it be?
Side bar story: All the while my temp living drama is going on, Derek is having his own drama back at the Texas house. We ran into a little trouble with our inspection and had to put in some French drains in between us and our neighbors, no big deal. However, the new owners weren't "happy" with the way it was done, so we had to have part of it redone. It's okay, no problem, money grows on trees. They also wanted to do a final walk through of the home? To inspect the house and make sure we didn't graffiti the walls or something stupid like that. During the final walkthrough (which was the night before the closing) their realtor took some pictures of some of the patch and painting work Derek had done to some of the walls....and they didn't like it (see the theme here). Their realtor tells us that they want 1K off the price of the house, or they won't buy it. We knew they already had the utilities put in their name, so we said NO, but offered to give them $350 to repaint that room. Luckily for us when they got to closing, the lender wouldn't approve the extra $350, so the new owners closed without it. HAHAHAHA! Guess it wasn't that big of a deal now was it?! Good lord!
We closed on the house, and finally our family is together. We landed in Cleveland and went to check into our hotel only to find that the credit card the temp housing people had put down was declined....yay! Here we go again. So, as you can imagine, I placed a very calm phone call to my contact to let them know that the fruit basket in our room to "apologize" for the whole fiasco was a slap in the face at this point...we are way beyond a fruit basket here.
So, moral of the story is, we are all 4 in Ohio and all is well. We look forward to this new chapter, but good lord...the last couple of weeks have been trying for sure. I will keep you all posted!
