WE HAVE ARRIVED!

I would like to start off this blog by saying that I don't care what happens from here on out, I'm never moving again. Dustin and I better really be in love with this apartment, because this is where I intend to die.

Well, we're finally here! It took a few days to get the internet set up and for me to return to a somewhat normally functioning state of mind, so I apologize for the radio silence. Let's start back on Long Island, shall we?

Either Dustin and I were completely brain fried from packing for weeks on end or we're just stupid, but we failed to remember that traveling to PA on a Friday afternoon is a deathwish. Not only that, but we failed to check and see if there were any baseball games that evening, so we missed the memo about the the subway series. Getting that uhaul packed up and then getting those idiot cats loaded into the jeep was so stressful, we didn't think about any of these important factors, we just left. At 2pm.

As I mentioned earlier, we decided that I would drive the uhaul and Dustin would drive the jeep. I couldn't drive with the cats; their crying makes me feel like I'm gonna pass out. It rips my heart out. I've driven stupid Uhauls a bajillion times and was fairly confident I could handle it. So we took off, all packed up, prepared mentally for a three hour trip.

We decided that we would try our best to caravan, but we wouldn't make ourselves crazy if we happened to get seperated. I find that often when you caravan, it's very stressful to try to keep together. We both knew where we were going and had fully charged cell phones, so we just went for it. Everything was going swimmingly until we reached about exit 42 on the LIE. Then it was a dead stop.

It was just as the traffic started that I started to feel that familiar sensation of a bladder approaching maximum capacity. If you've ever been pregnant, you know that you start to lose control over certain bodily functions. If you have to pee, you have to pee NOW. Except that I was in traffic. In a Uhaul. On the LIE. I waited a few minutes before alerting Dustin of the pee situation. He suggested we pull over, but if you're familiar with that area, there's nowhere to pull over. We decided to try to make it off the island and then stop.

BIG MISTAKE.

By the time I reached the exit for the Cross Island Parkway, I was crying in pain. I was pretty sure I was going to wet my pants. As we pulled onto the parkway, I prayed the traffic was moving. It wasn't.

I made an executive decision. I had to pull over. I had a box of trash bags in the "immediate needs" box I had packed for our arrival in the new apartment. Fuck it, I would pee into one of those. I told Dustin we were pulling over. I found the one spot big enough for two cars on the side of the Cross Island and ignored all of the angry New Yorkers yelling at me for being on the Parkway. I blacked out one of the windows with a garbage bag and began the process of trying to pee in a garbage bag.

Without getting into all of the details, I will say that it's pretty much impossible to pee in a garbage bag inside of a uhaul at 17 weeks pregnant....and I will also say that there is a very strong possibility that I peed all over the uhaul. I didn't even care. At least half of it got in the garbage bag...I tied it up, welcomed it as my new copilot and told Dustin we were going.

No sooner had I pulled out onto the still trafficky parkway did people start beeping at me. I immediately thought "flat tire." I was already starting to have a panic attack from the pee incident, so I called up Dustin in a frenzy.

"People are beeping and pointing at me!!" I screeched.

"I know," Dustin replied. I could hear the hesitation in his voice before he told me this next bit. "Okay, so a few people told me while we were parked that we're not supposed to have the uhaul on the parkway."

"What!?" I yelled. "What am I supposed to do??"

"I don't know," Dustin confessed. "I guess we just go for it and hope we don't get caught.

"Great!" I said sarcastically and hung up in frustration.

Luckily, the traffic had picked up. I prayed silently that all the cops in NYC were busy with more important business while ignoring all of the pissed off New Yorkers honking and flipping out in my direction.

Somehow, by some small break in the universe, we made it to the Throgs Neck Bridge without authortiative incident.

I breathed a sigh of relief. The worst was over, right?

NOPE!

I always turn on 1010 WINS when I hit the Throgs Neck. It's something my dad always did and now it's like force of habit for me. I caught it right on the "ones" and heard the traffic. Subway Series game traffic. One hour to the GW Bridge.

It should only take 15 minutes.

The next TWO hours between the Throgs Neck and GW Bridge were spent with me worrying about the cats and not drinking anything in fear I'd have to pee again.

Five hours after we left our apartment on LI, we finally reached route 80...it should have only taken us about an hour and 15 minutes to get to that point. We still had about 2 and a half hours to Scranton.

I will spare you the gorey details, but the bottom line is that we finally arrived at our apartment at about nine thirty, a full seven and a half hours after we left. Dustin's mom and sister met us at the place to unpack.

Yes, after all that, we still had to unload everything.

We would have just waited until the morning, but we only had Dustin's sister for that one night...and she's really strong...and I'm useless.

A little after midnight, everything was in the apartment. The only thing "put away" was our bed, which we collapsed into shortly thereafter.

The next day, Saturday, all we wanted to do was sleep. Unfortunately, we had to get up early to return the stupid uhaul. So we did that, both of us in terrible achy pain. We came home and started to slowly put the place together. Slowly being the operative word. Dustin was in a rush to get everything done, but eventually I convinced him to take it slow. He was gonna burn out. We went grocery shopping at the nearby Wegmans and tried to relax a little.

I forgot to mention that Saturday morning there was a huge armed forces parade right down our street.

Parking is a MAJOR PAIN IN THE ASS. We are gonna have to rent a spot because during the week, we're boned. On the weekend, you can park wherever. On Weekdays, After six and before 8am, you can pretty much park anywhere too. But Monday thru Friday, 8am to 6pm, you're either feeding the really overpriced meters (25 cents for fifteen minutes...two hour time limit) or parking in a garage. Today I had to figure out where to put the jeep. We moved it to a metered spot in the morning when Dustin was on his way to work, just to buy a little time. At about 10, I went to the store again (in search of beer for Dustin and dinner to make tonight ...the beer buying laws are ridick in PA...I'll get into that in another post) and when I got back I figured I'd park in the garage at the end of our street. NOPE. Garage full.

I get lost in a paper bag, but against my better judgement I decided to go iin search of another garage. I found one that seemed close and parked. When I got out of the garage, I was all spun around. I spent the next 45 minutes trying to figure out how to get back home. After losing half my body weight in sweat, I found home. I decided to sit and write as I caught my breath.

Dustin is having a good day so far. I am hoping the radio station will have a Production position open for me because as soon as I'm done putting the rest of the apartment together, I'm going to be bored and lonely. I haven't been by myself in quite sometime and I am missing Dustin a lot, as silly as that sounds. I'm comforted to know that he's only a block away, and even more comforted to know I don't have to get the jeep until he's around giving me better walking directions. As far as I know, the jeep is back in Jersey.

My goal for the rest of today is to get the apartment all together and make some dinner so Dustin can relax when he gets home. Tomorrow I'm going to rent a parking space at the motel that we live behind. (They could have rented one to me today, I went over there and got the deats, but they would have charged me an extra 20 for the end of this month since they only do first of the month to first of the month space leases. Before my epic garage adventure today, that seemed steep. Now, I'd pay double.)

So, here we are. Scrantonites. Let the new life begin.