Saturday, June 24, 2006

Eugene: Week One

And what a week it has been. Last Friday my father arrived in Oakland to (he thought) drive the truck up to Eugene. He worked all morning on Saturday taking apart our neighbor's swing set (which we were going to take) and then the rest of Saturday on various other packing and moving projects, bless his heart. On Sunday Number One Husband picked up our moving truck and everybody's first, second, and third thoughts were, "Oh jeez, no way is that truck big enough for all that crap." Stubborness, or stupidity, prevailed and my father and our friends Evan and Kenny spent all day playing the puzzle of how to best pack the truck. They did an amazing job and managed to get almost all our crap into the truck. By the end of the day, it was very clear that the truck was stuffed to the gills, there was still lots of miscellaneous crap lying around which wasn't even packed (what is it with all the stuff that just won't go into boxes? Or won't fit into any other box's category?) and that my husband needed to stick around to do a final crap sweep and come up later. (There's a little bit more to the story, something involving a camper we were going to buy and eventually didn't, which is too sordid to detail here.) I grabbed the baby, the toddler, our suitcases and the breast pump and drove to Santa Cruz to spend the night at Geo and Jess's house. My dad, being somewhat stubborn and definitely crazy, opted to skip sleep and to leave Sunday night for Eugene. With Number One Cat in the truck. More on that later.

Jessica, bless her wonderful dear sweet heart, had agreed to drive up to Eugene with me to help with the kids (see husband driving separately, above). I was pretty stressed out and had a hard time sleeping that night, and Number One Daughter had a rough night, also - It was clear she was also feeling stress about her world being rocked. She was incredibly restless all night, I had to get her a snack at about 1:30, and she didn't get back to sleep until close to 3am. However, the alarm on my Palm Pilot did not go off at 4am as it was supposed to (it hasn't been working lately, not sure what I did to deserve that). Jess woke me up close to 6:30 and we managed to get on the road between 7 and 7:30 - Several hours later than planned, but still within reason.

Our drive was uneventful, thank heavens (except for the crazy meth-head driver who passed us on the right shoulder in Scott's Valley - Farther up Hwy 17 traffic slowed down because of an accident and yes, it turned out that he had hit someone). The kids did really well and it was fantastic being on a road trip with such a good friend. We stopped in Medford to let the Toddler get her ya-yas out at a playground, and rolled into Eugene at around 9pm. We stopped at a market to get some food, and went straight to the house we are subletting. No truck, no dad, and one of the people who lives here was still here - "I thought you were coming in tomorrow..." Hey, no problem, we are.

I found out, when I called my mom (and after she chewed me out for not keeping in touch whilst on the road, sorry mom but we were driving and didn't think of it and we would have had to stop to call because there wasn't any cell coverage for much of the way) that my dad was at a Motel 6 with my cat who needed, well, cat maintenance, so back we went to the market for cat maintenance items and then to the Motel 6 to pick up their last two rooms and sleep it off.

Tuesday morning myself, dad, and Jess all got to the house and dad and I unloaded the truck while Jess watched the kids. Husband and Number One Son showed up with Number Two Cat in the early evening, and there was more unloading of trucks and careful stacking and storing of boxes and furniture. We've managed to store all of our crap in the shed and part of the living room here, and we've only unpacked clothes, some toys and a couple of kitchen items (this is, after all, a household of grad students). Jess left on Thursday.

We're still getting the house and our stuff organized so we can live here for the next ten or so weeks. It has been hard to do that because Eugene is just such a darned cool place to be - There is so much to do here to bring the kids to. On Friday we saw this guy do a fantastic show at the public library as part of the summer reading program, and I signed the kids up for swimming and the Toddler for soccer later in the summer. We're getting set up for bicycling (bought a Burley) and I'm pursuing some job leads. And the weather is gorgeous.