Back to...Normal?

Hi everyone! First of all, sorry I haven't been around for a while. As you know, I have been in the process of changing jobs and moving. We have successfully relocated to our new house in a new town, but we have sure had some interesting adventures along the way.

I am sooooo sick of moving. We lived in one little place in Key Largo from 1999 (right before we married) up until Sept. of 2003. Then we decided to move to Corpus Christi, Texas. Why? Well, we needed a change of scene (for many reasons - too much to go into now) and I was born and raised in south Texas. Corpus is on the water and we would be about an hour and a half from my parents and grandmother. So we relocated.

We spent our first year there in a one bedroom apartment, I got pregnant so we moved into a larger, 2 bedroom apartment in 2004. In 2005 I lost my job, then a few months later my husband lost a good job also. so we decided we had enough and were going back to Florida.

We had nothing lined up in Florida so we spent our first 3 weeks in St. Petersburg, in a trailer that belongs to a friend of a friend, renting it by the week. I landed a job in Zephyrhills, so we moved up there. We lived there in a one bedroom duplex for almost a year, with my son sleeping in the living room. When I got a raise and we could afford to move again, we moved to Tampa into a 2 bedroom apartment.

Any of you who have been reading this blog know what happened then. I made the decision that I needed to change jobs again because I couldn't stand working for a tyrant. So I found a new (and better, and higher paying) job in the same field and accepted it. Unfortunately it was just too far away to commute so we had to move again. Now we are in a great little house in a neat little town right on the beach. Whew!

We were really tired of carrying furniture and loading up a U-Haul (moving truck), so this time we hired movers to come in and do it for us. They were supposed to show up last Saturday at 11:00 am. They were also supposed to call the day before and confirm. We were out of the house pretty much all of Friday afternoon and early evening wrapping up other loose ends, but since we have an answering machine and cell phones, we weren't worried about missing the call.
We got home and checked the machine and no one had called. We tried to call the movers then, but no answer. We figured they were closed and we would call them in the morning.

Next morning, we called and called, and no one answered. Finally at about 10:00, a guy answered and we found out we had a problem. Something had come up and they needed to reschedule our move. They claim to have tried to call a number of times and got no answer and no answering machine. Whatever. So, we tried to work out an alternative arrangement. I told him it HAD to be done this weekend, because we work during the week and wouldn't have time to deal with it. Well, they could try to get 2 guys to work on Sunday, but it would be time and a half since they didn't normally work Sundays. I said whatever, just do it, it has to be done, I'll pay the extra money.

So they moved us on Sunday. Our cable and internet was supposed to be hooked ub between 8:00 and 11:00 am on Monday. My husband was here all day. The gas company came that morning and hooked us up, but the cable company never came and never called. So hubby finally called and complained that afternoon, and was told that the guy came to our house and knocked bu no one answered the door. OK, maybe he had gone into the back yard, or was in the bathroom or something, but don't they normally call you if they miss you? They say they do! So they assured him that someone would be here before 8:00 pm and that they would call ahead and let us know they were on the way.

We waited around til about 7:30 and called back again. They assured us they guy was out doing jobs and he would definietly get to us, but may be a little late, like 15 or 20 minutes. We could live with that, so we waited some more. Finally around 9:00 we called back again and told them we had to reschedule because we had to go to bed soon. At 10:30, just as we were getting ready to go to be, a knock on the door. I opened it and there stood the cable guy. I had him come on in and survey the situation. He said the job would take a couple hours because he would have to install a new cable outlet, etc.

We told him to forget it, we had already rescheduled. He said he was they same guy that came by earlier and he swore that he came to the right house, knocked and got no answer. He said he immediately reported this to dispatch and that they were supposed to have called us. We had given a cell number as the contact, since our home phone wouldn't be activated until next week. We pulled out the cell phone and checked voice mail, incoming calls and missed calls - there was NO call from the cable company. He was nice enough so we laughed it off for the time being.

Next day, another cable guy showed up when he was supposed to and did the job. Later that evening while we were trying to watch TV, our cable box malfunctioned - kept cutting off and on all by itself, and we couldn't watch anything. So we called the cable company again. They said they would have someone out the next day to switch out the box for us. This guy showed up too, and switched out the box, everything seemed to be working fine, then we asked him to check the cable in the bedroom as it didn't seem to be working, we couldn't get any channels back there. He said that this was the responsibility of the original installer and we would have to schedule him to come back out and finish his job properly. So now he is supposed to come back on Monday - we'll see!

To top everything else off, our 2 large, four and a half foot long iguanas escaped from their cage. They are now at large in the neighborhood. We have seen one of them in a tree in our back yard for the last few days, but don't know where the other one is. They are not aggressive and won't bother anyone, but some people are scared of them, plus we have probably broken some kind of law by letting them loose, even though it was unintentional. They are considered to be "exotic animals" and I know the rules are sometimes pretty strict when it comes to exotics.

On the bright side - we love our house and the town we are now living in. I have got almost everything unpacked and put away. The job is going great, and now that we are moved and most of the turmoil has (hopefully) resolved, we should settle in very nicely.


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