Can I Sob Here a Bit?
OK, I know nobody likes a whiner, but I am sitting here staring at all the costs included with moving (on top of buying a new home), and I'm wondering where this $$$ is going to come from. Of course, with that said, I should also mention that it's not like me to be this frazzled!! I've always believed that everything is for my own good and that even if life gets difficult, I should be learning some thing from this. This whole experience should be for my benefit (whether it sinks in during this life or in the next). However, besides thinking "I've learned not to do this again!!" I'm not sure what I'm to get out of this.
No wait, perhaps I do know, but don't want to know...maybe the Lord is trying to teach me to be sympathetic to those who are in this situation all of the time. It's said many times in the scriptures that Christ suffered so he could better help...maybe I should learn to help others more from this, rather than scoffing and saying "You should have planned better!!"
Wow, you know this blog isn't even a two way conversation, and I feel better...I was going to list all of my to-do's on top of my complaints, but I think I'd rather start them than think about having to do them. Thanks for listening (reading).
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hope you feel better!
If you do some internet searches and (especially!) ask questions here, I'll bet you can find cheaper ways to do a lot of the things you need to do.
Thanks.
Thanks.
Luckily, I've been an avid reader of The Tightwad Gazette, so really, we're pinching things that have already been pinched (poor Lincoln).
Mainly I'm looking at the moving costs, but we think cheapest will be a do-it yerselfer truck. Then to decide if it's worth driving the two wee ones, or if it's better to fly them (ages 2.5 and 9 mos). It's a 22 hour drive (straight, probably longer with these 2) or a 4 hour flight. Decisions, decisions. Of course, nothing that others have not done and accomplished!!
Cool!
Hadn't heard of Craig's List or FreeCycle...awesome. Also, the drive info was helpful, as we are moving from northern Utah, and I found that we will have to drive through flat, boring, nothing but sage brush, Wyoming. Yay. Perhaps I'll look into those flights...
Wyoming is better than mid-Indiana
Trust me on that one.
EVERYONE should use Craig's List for everything if possible, you'll get the best prices for everything and can sell stuff on it too. We found our new apartment on it. If you go to http://www.craigslist.org/ it will take you to the San Francisco page, and on the right there are listings of the different cities it services. The city Lists include surrounding areas, so for South Bend you might want to click "Chicago" or something like that.
Freecycle is http://www.freecycle.org and you can join your (old and new) neighborhood one that way.
As I said before, do lots of internet searches! The Tightwad Gazette was written when the internet was piddly.
Try the local recycling company
Our local recycling company sponsors our freecycle-style site, something like Twin Cities Free Market.com
And yes, Southern Indiana really does have a twilight zone feel. We stopped at a gas station when driving through -- endured some very ugly racist graffiti in the toilet the likes of which I had never seen in all my driving through the deep south -- and I was ready to lock the doors and stay put until Michigan!
Shaun
www.homeschoolblogger.com/shaunms
Glad you feel better about the mound of stuff to deal with!
As a frequent cross country rover with a little kid in tow, I'm tellin ya, unless BOTH your kids are very good travelers and fall asleep in cars for hours and hours at a time, fly.
When you're travelling with a two year old you should stop the car every two or three hours and let them run around for 1/2 an hour, just to keep them sane.
2000 miles is what we moved in a U-Haul and it took us four days of steady driving, stopping only for gas, food, and sleep. DD was 2 1/2 and we let her romp every time we stopped somewhere that had grass, and tried to stop to eat at places that had playspaces, but like I said, four days. I was exhausted and I hardly drove.
I thought Wyoming was beautiful, actually. We drove through Missouri, naturally, or as I dubbed it, "the big easy-bake oven", Nebraska (flat, flat, and more flat--no other place is as flat as that), Wyoming (mesas with "rocks" on top a la Wyle E. Coyote, no kidding), Utah (an austere beauty that reminded us of the Scottich Highlands), Idaho (Twin Falls at sunset, spectacular), and of course, Oregon, through the Gorge, unequalled splendor.
Honestly with two such very young ones, I say fly, but please feel free to ignore me.
Anhata
www.familynaturally.com
Your Family's General Store, Naturally
morning pages
I write three pages of nonsense/deep thoughts most mornings and I find that talking to myself, or more importantly, listening to myself, really helps. Writing helps me focus on the listening because you can't write a dozen thoughts at once so you're forced to finish one at a time. It has helped me feel so much better - takes me 30-45 mins on average, now I'm well-practiced.
I've done the big move thing, though of course we didn't have a choice about driving (Singapore to UK!), and there will just be days when you wonder why on earth you've made such dumb decisions, what's wrong with staying put anyway... second guessing yourself is destructive but it will happen. Writing helped that too because it made me admit to it all. Writing here when you feel rough often helps too, as you noticed.
Find as many little ways to cope as you can - anything that gets you through because it isn't easy, no matter what. Stores of chocolate and Coke for the worst days helped me!!
and feel free to come on here and whine whenever you need to, because that's what we're here for, as long as you share the highs as well as the lows.
Kerri.
Whenever we do the almost 24
Whenever we do the almost 24 hour straight drive to visit my parents in Florida,we leave after dinner,driving all night, and arriving around lunchtime. We have been doing this with kids for years,ever since the first one was an infant. We only stop for gas and coffee refills and bathroom breaks(usually all at the same stop). It can be done and we did this before DVD players were in cars!!! Best of luck.
We live in Texas and we
We live in Texas and we drive to northern Utah to visit family about once a year. We went last November with all 5 kids, but none of them were toddlers or crawling. We do have a portable DVD player for the car now, and it is wonderful, but we didn't always have that. If you will be driving back to visit family much, you might consider such a thing a good investment.
We used to live in California and drive to Utah (much shorter, but if there is anything uglier to drive through than the northern Nevada desert, I don't know what it is) without any kind of media entertainment. Anyway, if you decide to drive, one thing you might try for your 2 year old is a little walkman type tape player. You can get one at Target for $5 and if you don't have tapes, record some CD's onto tapes. My kids love having their own music to listen to and we save them exclusively for long trips.
Where in Utah are you? I grew up in Logan and went to college at the U--where I met my DH. I miss the mountains and my family, but I have really gotten used to not having any snow! Winter never was my favorite time of year.
Lauralyn
I second the DVD player. We
I second the DVD player. We made it from New Mexico to Atlanta in 2 days with an almost 2 year old, 5, and 7. Every other movie had to the the Wiggles. LOL! We stopped every 3 or 4 hours (playlands at McDs and Burger King are great along the interstates when you don't have time to try to find a city park).
Hey Lauralyn! How are the twins!?
depends where you are now
DO NOT, whatever you do, drive south-to-north through Indiana. Go through Ohio, go through Illinois or Michigan, whatever, but if your route would take you on the I-65/ US 31 corridor (even just one or the other), take a huge detour or fly. It's nothing but flat soybean and corn fields. I'm not talking pretty bucolic farms and big sky, I'm talking a horrible twilight-zone type of existence for a good 250 miles. DH grew up near South Bend and agrees with me.
Tightwad Gazette is great, but remember we have resources now that didn't exist in Amy's day. Craig's List and Freecycle come to mind.
Edited to add: of course living in South Bend you'll drive on US 31 a fair amount. It's the Indianapolis-to-South Bend drive up on 31 that you want to avoid. Even Louisville to Indianapolis on 65 isn't so bad as that.
I disagree on Nebraska
The western part of Nebraska, at least, has a steady incline. And the fields are kind of pretty. Reminds me of Croatia. Indiana is much flatter.
we're in Logan!
My DH is getting his masters degree here (he defends his thesis on May 3rd!! How's that for an awesome high?) Then we're off to Notre Dame for the Ph.D, in psychometrics. Hopefully only 3 years, then who knows!!
twins
The twins are doing great. They are 9 months old now! I still haven't had a good night's sleep, but that is really my only complaint. They are very happy babies overall. Tabitha is a lot quieter and more reserved about trying new things while Isaac is our little explorer now that he can crawl. Tabitha still gets places just by rolling. She just doesn't seem interested in even trying to crawl. There are some pictures on my blog if you want to see. You might have to scroll through more recent entries to get to them.
http://www.lauralyna.blogspot.com/
I enjoy hearing about your little ones, too. Our oldest and youngest kids are about the same age, so it's fun.
Lauralyn
You're right about the leaving at night
I'd forgotten that we've done that a time or two with DD, worked well for her, not so much for me who can't sleep in a car.
Anhata
www.familynaturally.com
Your Family's General Store, Naturally
OMG, Becky! Don't ever come
OMG, Becky! Don't ever come to visit me. LOL! Nothing but flatness empty rangeland and fields here. VERY flat and not so picturesque to most. LOL!
okay...
I just double-checked your website Jenny, and I looked at some of the pictures of the landscape for the last two years, including the aerial photo of your neighbor's place after the fire. I noticed irregular patches of grass right next to irregular patches of sandy dirt. There were blades of grass that were different heights. Some of the sand dunes in your recent pics were 2 feet deep, and some were 3 feet deep-- that's three whole feet of elevation! I even saw a few trees and bushes. And you have nice-looking sunsets.
What I'm talking about is this. Looks okay, right? Maybe a little square-shaped, and sure all the cornstalks are disturbingly identical (my aunt used to grow corn in her garden, and the stalks were NOT all exactly the same size). But at least it's green. And the homogeneity is not broken up by any pesky two-foot rises or trees or anything like that. Now picture it for seven hours straight. And when I say "straight" I mean the road-- DH says you can stick a club on your steering wheel, kick back, and take a nap and when you wake up you will still be on the road and in the correct lane. Unfortunately you won't know if you've made any progress since everything will look the same as it did when you went to sleep, but maybe the odometer will give some information. And if you're lucky, maybe it will rain so you can look at raindrops falling for visual variety.
Now, I'm not being fair. Most of these farms are not populated because they are run by Con Agra or some such. But a few of them have an old farmhouse on them, and sometimes that farmhouse is even inhabited rather than abandoned and used as a shed. I think we must have seen five or six between Indianapolis and Chicago when my dad and I drove that route, and two or three appeared inhabited. So the farmhouses do provide a little variety once per hour.
Lost in the midwest
DH once got turned the wrong direction leaving a customer site after dark and drove over two hours without realizing it because the two hours of cornfields between the plant and his hotel looked EXACTLY like the two hours of cornfields going the other direction!!!!!
He was NOT amused!
Blessings,
Lenora
"...if woman's work is never done, why bother about how much of it [isn't] getting done at any given moment?"
~ Claire Fraser in The Fiery Cross by Diana Gabaldon
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