tampa at last.
our last day of driving took us from mcdonough, georgia to tampa, florida in about six hours.
take note: by “our last day of driving,” i really mean, “michael’s dad’s last day of driving,” since he drove the ENTIRE way from los angeles to tampa! michael offered to drive tens of times, but he insisted he was up to continue, and next thing we knew he’d taken us the entire way! crazy.
once we made it to tampa the unpacking began.
we thought that we’d split our belongings between michael’s room at his parents house, michael’s parents garage, my room at my mom’s house, and my dad’s garage. that way, it would be divvy’d up and not as overwhelming… buuuut we kinda forgot to share this plan with any of the involved parties until about 24 hours before our arrival, at which time we learned that my dad’s garage only had room for 1-2 boxes (not even worth the trip), and michael’s mom was (maybe not so shockingly) less than excited about having stacks of boxes in their house for the next 4 months. also, they have a new grand baby underfoot and there is baby stuff in almost every single room of the house.
luckily, my mom said, i could load up my room to the ceiling if i wished and could use my brothers’ room (they don’t even know about that yet… guess they’ll either read it here, or find the nice surprise of surplus furniture and miscellaneous piles in their room when they arrive home from college for thanksgiving on wednesday).
so, we did put some things in my brothers’ room, but 90% of the stuff had to go in my room. this also, happens to be the room where michael and i (and the dogs) will be sleeping for the next two weeks on the nights we are in tampa (we’re going to try to spend as many nights as possible out at his family’s beach place for reasons you will see in just a moment). it is a lot of stuff. or at least a lot of stuff to fit in my little room along with all of my existing furniture, and we had to keep a path to the bed so that we could still use the room for the next few days.
and also, i would like to say, this picture doesn’t even convey the mayhem. i think it looks even more crazy/crowded/borderline dangerous, in person.
wondering where the bed is?
it’s against the back wall. we had to push it to the far corner to make room for the boxes…
ahhh.. there it is.
yes, all four of us are sitting in that very bed, right now. completely surrounded by boxes. michael and i both commented there is no way we’d be sleeping here if florida had earthquakes. that would be deadly. but since we are out of the land of earthquakes, we are sleeping in our little oasis amidst the cardboard box berlin wall encroaching on two sides.
michael also claims the entire bedroom smells like cardboard. my nose has been stuffy for the past month or more, so i can’t confirm, but i think he’s probably correct.
after unpacking as much as we could fit, we snuck a few furniture pieces over to michael’s parents’ house that were granted permission to live in the back corner of their garage after all. then we had dinner with my mom before she headed to bed.
micheal and i watched tv and talked about how crazy it is that we lived in los angeles, cozy in our apartment, settled in all of our things, and now we are essentially homeless, and everything we own fit into a 6′ x 12′ trailer (we had to throw out / give away a LOT, LOT of our stuff. it was really sad.). it doesn’t feel real to either of us.
i feel like our apartment is still sitting in culver city the way it looked just a week before with all of our things in their place (more or less) and our bikes in the garage (i am seriously mourning the loss of our bikes — they wouldn’t fit in the trailer) and our jobs still ours. i just feel like we are on a vacation and we’ll be back in a bit.
it’s going to take a while to sink in.
after tv time we took the dogs on a walk to the 7-11 that is just about three blocks from my mom’s house so michael could get a soda. this is a walk we took so many times in los angeles, where we also had a 7-11 just three blocks from our apartment.
but this time we set out at 10:30pm and didn’t need sweaters, or long pants, or scarves, or closed toe shoes, the dogs had more grass then they even knew what to do with… unlike the little patches in the sea of concrete that they’ve been accustomed to the past couple years, we didn’t pass a single homeless and/or crazy person, we passed a resturant where the entertainment was winding down with a final round of live country songs performed by two guys in matching, short sleeve, linen shirts, and when we finally got to 7-11, there were signs on the door proclaiming, “we now sell bait”.
we definitely aren’t in los angeles anymore.
bayshore blvd.
tampa, fl
