Moving in Madness Part 2

Cont.... I take Princess clothes shopping to look for a router as I find out that each apartment needs to provide its own wi-fi! I have never heard of this as most apartment complexes have one massive router for their unit. NOPE!  I try to calm myself down and get away from the fumes and it is raining so being outside or unloading is out of the question. Walking campus to find classes is out so I go shopping for several hours after taking her to breakfast / lunch.

Her roommate texts hours later saying no one is there and none of the carpet is laid three hours or more after we left. I want to cry as I am so tired, migraine coming on and I asked the carpet manager guy for his number before we left to be able to call and make sure it was finished before heading back and he started to give me a number, backs up to the wall, kinda slides down the wall, thinks for a minute and gives me a number.

Before that, I asked about why they couldn’t lay the carpet and the email said something about glue. He tells me there is no glue and I ask why they can’t lay the carpet and he gets a look like “I’m a kids caught with my hand in the cookie jar….” And tells me then that it is “difficult” carpet. Basically, I am thinking that he just lied by the way he reacted. I think they messed up somehow and he doesn’t want to admit it. He lied telling me the carpet would be laid just to get us to leave.

Well, when the room mate tells us that no one is in there, I write a text saying, “Hey, just wanted to make sure it is ok to come back and that her room is done.” And send it to the number he gave me. Um…. It is a land line…… I call the number twice on my phone and once on Princess Threes and it NEVER rings. It just was silent forever. The minutes add up but no sound at all comes out.

I don’t want to go back to the place with the smelly carpet as there is no where to sit, and her room mate said one guy is laying carpet in the bedroom that no one will be in until Sunday night. We go back and ask him about it and he tells us he will do her room next but he doesn’t get any help until about 7 p.m.

As soon as he finishes a room, I take the door and put it on the hinges trying to clear out a room. When he finished the carpet in a room, I vacuumed the room so we could move stuff in from the cars. We ended up having to sit in the car in the rain for about 1 ½ hours waiting for her room to be finished so we could clean it and move stuff in. While in the car, I see the “Carpet Boss” and poke my head out and tell him he “gave me the wrong number” laughing like it was a funny mistake. He looks at me like he knew he had been caught, doesn’t say a word and enters another apartment. No, “I’m sorry…” or “Oh, that was a mistake” or anything. Just a passing look.

Princess was so tired and stressed she refused to go into any store. We couldn’t get groceries because we couldn’t get all the stuff out of the kitchen until the front room was done. So, we sat in the humid car rather than standing in the rain or sitting in a restaurant as there is no community room at those apartments and most of the units were not finished having their carpet laid and all the stuff was moved into the main living areas.

I wanted to go to a hotel but I they were all booked. Um… Move in weekend! Finally, about 8 we move her boxes in and I am vacuuming the house and putting on doors and about 10:30 I am so sweaty and tired and the bathroom is FILTHY and wasn’t cleaned and the walls have marks on them, the stairwell light is out and it is dark as she is in a basement apartment. The living room light fixture is cracked and a light out. I had to call the carpet guy back three times as one of the vents didn’t get cut out in one of the rooms, as I vacuumed, a string was stuck up in the transition and I was worried it would run if I didn’t tell them and he told me it probably would have. The pressure stretcher dented the cabinet base and the carpet was just lying on cement there with no carpet tack to hold it and he pulled out the cabinet and told me to tell the manager that they would need to “glue” down that carpet later when they came back to finish the stairs.  

I can’t blame the carpet guy as he was alone working straight all day, I didn’t see him take a break and he is a teacher and was doing this to help someone out and lived three hours drive away. I was VERY grateful he was there but somewhere along the line, someone messed up as this should have been done months before that day.

The guy in the next apartment said he was told for months they were putting in new carpet and another guy a few down said he moved his stuff out of his room two weeks ago and hasn’t been in there waiting for it to be done. I don’t know where the brake down was but it isn’t like they don’t know when school starts.

We hadn’t eaten since 10:30 that morning so we get some dinner just before 11 p.m. and I am so stressed my stomach was hurting as I have been having issues and I think it is my gallbladder so we go shopping at Wal-Mart just before midnight. There is nothing left on the shelves.

We get back about one and unpack the food, put it away and are making the beds for the night when I realize she has no plugs where she can use them near the bed. She also has no mattress cover, garbage can for the bathroom etc.

TWO a.m. I AM BACK AT WALMART! What the $(*)$&%#)(@% is my thought as I can barely walk having slept on the floor, stood in stores all day because I didn’t want to sit in the car which I was in the entire day before driving in pouring rain, having carried heavy bins and boxes down stairs and moved beds, drawers, vacuumed the entire apartment, cleaned the bathroom for several hours, swept the kitchen twice, hung doors by myself for the entire apartment, scouring tubs, mopping floors without mops and no hot water!

By the time I waited for a worker to tell me there were no toilet brushed on the last truck they were unloading and another worker to check on surge protector power strips twice and telling me they had no more in the store, another forty minutes had gone by. I finally figure that I can purchase a heavy duty extension cord and plug her surge protector unit in it. I search the store and find them on a back wall only to turn to leave and there is a wall of surge protector power strips!!!!! I heard the guy ask the manager on the radio if they had power strips anywhere in the store other than the electronic section and they all said “NO” to that! I wonder how many how many people ended up not getting what they needed at that point. A garbage can and some light bulbs later, I am back at the apartment gagging on carpet fumes washing light fixtures and putting in bulbs!

I took a FREEZING shower and was grateful that I had water as after cleaning the entire apartment, hanging doors, moving heavy dressers etc, I needed a shower! I slept with the windows open, fans in the hallway, the fans on in both bathrooms, the fan over the stove on and it was FREEZING in the apartment and rained but the smell was so bad I couldn’t close the windows. I had a HUGE migraine when I woke feeling very toxic and my body was so swollen my eye were even swollen and my sister came dropping some bins off for us on her way through town and they told me I looked “puffy.”

I dreamed in the night that a Dr. told me I had a really rare cancer I had never heard of before and they didn’t know of any way to cure it and I kept waking through the night thinking the alarm hadn’t gone off. I really shouldn’t say “night” as I didn’t get to bed until is was really morning but I was glad I didn’t have to be somewhere at 8. I know the smell was making it hard for me to sleep and my head hurt so much that if I moved at all, I would wake some.

I scrubbed black off the bathroom floor where they must have used hair spray and it pulled in the dirt off shoes or something as it was terribly hard to remove. The tub looked like someone used toilet cleaner on it and was a blue color along with lots of dirt. I scrubbed that three times trying to get it clean which I did sort of but I think the cleaner they used ruined the finish as it felt like in those areas that someone had used sand paper so I am sure it will just get dirty there again but at least it is clean for Princess Three. I put a picture of it dirty and then one of it clean in here to show the contrast. You can still see the area that is a bit sanded but it is MUCH cleaner now!

We visited my brothers church where his daughter was speaking about her mission service (she did a wonderful job with her talk) and my dad gave us a few bins we sent up with him. We left his house early and went back to the apartment to hang pictures and paid to do a few loads of laundry, washing her sheets that were sent up with my sister from her other apartment that hadn’t been washed yet.

I got her settled the best I could but she had dinner plans with her friend where we stayed the first night so I left at 7:30 with a horrible headache. I had already taken pills and drank LOTS of Coke hoping I could make the five hour trip home without incident.(See here for a post about my headaches.)

I was blessed that the only time it really rained hard on the way home was when I pulled in to get gas and use the restroom. It POURED while I did that and when I pulled out to get back on the highway, it slowed!

In all, it was a horrible weekend and I worry about Princess Three sleeping with those fumes as I know they are toxic but at this point, she had paid the entire year up front and moving isn’t an option at this point so I pray she can keep her windows open and the fans on long enough to clean it out. I may try to get the ozonator up there somehow to clean the air.

BUT, with all that, when I was cleaning the bathroom floor, guess what was there on the floor? A dime. Even with all the crazy, Heavenly Father was telling me it would all be “OK.” He is so good to give me little reminders that it will be alright.(Click here to read a post about the finding money thing.)

Also, when Princess was looking at computers to purchase, she was just typing in numbers randomly on the 10 key numbers as she needs those for one of her classes and guess what the random numbers added up to? Yes, 11,1108 or something. There were four ones in a row. I laughed as she said, “I didn’t do that on purpose!” with a shocked look on her face. I told her I knew she hadn’t and that was why I was laughing. I checked out and paid for my order and then she was paying for her computer and I look down and there on the little shelf in front of her was a penny. I pointed to it and told her I think someone was trying to tell us she picked the right computer with both of those signs. I thought it funny that I didn’t see the penny until she was actually paying for the computer.(Click her to read about the 111 post.)

The move in morning, we ate our breakfast/lunch at Wendy’s and as I got out of the car there was a penny on the ground. I picked it up and showed it to Princess and when we got into the restaurant, I dropped it into the “Wendy’s adoption” donation box near the register. I thought perhaps that penny was a blessing for someone else as I had already received a reminder to “Trust in God” by just seeing it as I got out of the car. Princess Three told me, “Way to pay it forward.” We both smiled thinking that penny wouldn’t do much financial for someone but for me, it meant much.

So, even with my nightmare weekend, I gave thanks that we arrived with no car issues, safely and that they agreed to lay the carpet and that we were able to get her in and that she had a wonderful friend who allowed us to stay and that she is moved in enough that she can start school without the added stress of moving furniture in and out! I was grateful to get home safely tonight as well. It is now 4:30 a.m. and I still need to figure out pictures and think I will break this into two posts as it is so long. I have a list of things to do today but think I may just turn off my alarm and phones! Like that would ever really happen. 

Also, I am not taking pictures of all the things wrong in the place to "dis" the place as it is really a nice apartment and in good repair but because of the issue with the carpet, the manger said that they must have kicked the cleaning people out to cut the carpet. She also noted that she noticed the bathroom baseboard on checkout from the old tenants and they should be getting new flooring in the kitchen and bathroom so that should be fixed then. She thinks the light fixture was cracked by the carpet people as that wasn't there when she checked the other tenants out either.

I wanted to write a post about documenting things with pictures or video when you move in or out so that if someone tries to keep your cleaning deposit due to damage or it not being clean, you will have documentation that when you moved in, the problem was already there. 

So, now I have documented it and given you some great advice for moving in to an apartment. I ALWAYS take pictures of any damage to each girls apartment when they move in and they have come in handy and we have actually gotten more back after the fact from their deposit because I did document it.