Unexpected Discoveries

The weird things you discover after moving to a new town.

1. My hair looks better in Michigan. The lower humidity in Ann Arbor is much better for my curls. This means I've had to experiment with products, since I've lived in the world of crazy frizz since my hair decided to be curly 22 years ago. (It was stick straight until I was 12. I got a perm--it was 1992, shut up--and it stuck. Forever.)
2. Lower humidity means we're thirsty all. The. Time.
3. The thing that's been taking the most getting used to in the apartment: I have to turn the other way to get to the light switch in my bathroom. 

I'm sure there will be more unexpected discoveries coming up...

Lessons Learned (...and learning...)

My favorite box label. Only in our apartment.

We're deep into the unpacking process, and I've been learning a lot about long-distance moves. I' storing some notions for the move in two years. Things I experimented with, like:

1. Making a hole in the bottom of a garbage bag, threading hangers through the hole with clothes still on the hangers, and tying the bag up. I had too many clothes in my closet for one wardrobe box (even after all of the donations and swaps! How did that happen??) and this helped keep them organized.
2. Organizing my jewelry by wrapping my necklaces individually in tissue paper (okay, I used Kleenex) so they didn't get tangled, and bagging pairs of earrings in tiny ziplocks so nothing got lost.

And some things I learned from having guys load our stuff on a truck and drive for several days:

1. If using recycled boxes, make sure to label your boxes clearly! We used boxes from my mom's best friend's recent move, and even though we tried our best to scratch out her writing, and even labeled ours in a different color, the movers were still confused about which rooms to put the boxes in. ("Follow the black writing, not the green!") Plus, sometimes we just plumb forgot to label the boxes with our own directions, so we've been finding things in the wrong rooms sometimes.
2. The "miscellaneous" box is not only a necessity, it's expected. One of our movers told me, "If you don't have at least one miscellaneous box, you're not moving right." That said, we have a lot of miscellaneous boxes. And they're not easy to unpack.
3. The best box we had: our MISCELLANEOUS BOX OF DEATH. We had a huge box in the middle of The Kid's room that random big stuff went into. It was huge, it was messy, and it was awesome.
4. Movers expect you to not be fully packed when they get to your place. So, if you've made a pact to trash/donate/leave behind anything that hasn't made it into a box by the time the movers arrive, unless you tell them that at the get-go, they might thrown your random junk into a box and move it halfway across the country. We've found a few boxes of old mail and things we meant to throw away or donate. Oops!
5. Even with the best of intentions and super-nice and -efficient movers, things will be stressful and non-time-sensitive. It's tough to not know when your stuff is going to get to your new home, even though a couple-of-day delay gives you time to figure out where your furniture is going to go when it gets there. We thought we were going to get a two-day heads-up; what we got was a two-hour heads-up. While we were in a movie theatre seeing The Edge of Tomorrow. Because we thought there was no way our stuff was going to arrive that day.
6. It all worked out fine.

The First Great Move

Well, cats and kittens, Phase One of The Great Move is officially done. Jake and I are living in our new apartment in Ann Arbor, waiting for our stuff and our son to come join us.

The movers loaded up their truck on Monday--three and a half hours later than expected, but they moved very efficiently after they did show up--leaving Jake and I with a mostly-bare apartment, an indifferent turtle, and a very confused cat. (He was more than content with the boxes, though.)

Box Cat

We were busy the rest of Monday with errands: returning the modem and cable boxes, buying necessary toiletries, packing up stuff to take in our car, cleaning, and hanging out with friends at our favorite soon-to-not-be-local-any-more place.

We woke up bright and early on Tuesday morning, set to packing the car and cleaning out the kitchen (seven bags of garbage from our tiny little kitchen! How???), and turned in our keys. I suppose it always feels this way during a move, but I felt like I was in a sitcom, say the last episode of Friends, or The Cosby Show, where there's a poignancy to turning off the lights and closing the door for the last time.

I guess that's why it's a trope, right? That feeling of closure, of not being able to look behind yourself any more, and the necessity in moving forward? (Sorry to get morose on you; it still hasn't 100% hit me yet, but I did spend a good five minutes sitting on the floor in The Kid's room on Tuesday, thinking about how he'd never see that view again. The feelings are starting to creep in.)

Iggy was super good on the 8.5-hour drive to Ann Arbor. Jake and I had been worried; on every drive he's taken in the past, he's yowled so much that we've had to let him out of his carrier and hold him in a vise grip on our laps. This time, though, he hardly made a peep, even when his water spilled on him during a rest stop and he had to air dry. What a trooper! I think the change this time might have been putting his bed in the carrier with him, rather than the towel we usually put in.

Side note: Iggy got into catnip for the very first time on Monday. Apparently, he's one of the cats who just blisses out rather than getting hyper. Who knew? Good to store for future reference.

The drive wasn't too bad at all, and it was great to get the keys and walk around our new place.

Due to administrative silliness, we actually had no idea what floor plan we'd be walking into. I think we had built one up in our heads, and of course, that wasn't the one we ended up getting. The luxury of a long-distance move where your furniture doesn't arrive for days and days, though, is that you get to take the time to really figure out where everything is going to go.

We're getting used to the floor plan, and so while for the last two days, we've been living like this:

Living Room (with a new area rug!)

Breakfast Bar, with a peek into the kitchen. 

Dining Room

...we have a good sense of where things are going to go when we get them. (When we're going to get them is another story! We're crossing our fingers for tomorrow.) Yesterday, we went to the Habitat for Humanity Re-Store to pick up a new dining room table and comfy chair to replace the ones we left behind--that place is amazing, by the way, and I think there will be many visits in the future, for furniture and knick-knacks.

We've also, of course, been exploring local food. Yesterday, we visited the Zingerman's empire in a weird industrial park, and spent way too much time sampling cheeses and desserts.

Zingerman's Creamery

Our apartment is within a five-minute walk of a grocery store, pet supply store, and a couple of restaurants, which was really key when we were looking for places to live. We're really excited about the Halal restaurant we walked to for dinner last night and the Great Harvest Bakery in the same plaza, and we know The Kid will flip his lid for the frozen yogurt place that's all tricked out in his favorite color.

It's a lot of getting used to, and the learning curve is going to be steep. But I've been enjoying coffee on our balcony and the luxury of having laundry in-unit. Updates as they come!