Wednesday dawned as the day I had been dreading most. It was the day we had slated to go back to the rental and clean. Did I mention by 8:00 it was already 80˚ out? Super nice. I got there first – going straight there from daycare – opened up all the windows and got down to scrubbing the kitchen. Mom and Brett pulled up about half an hour later in the U-Haul truck we had rented to pack up some remaining donation items including a Room and Board couch that, at the last minute, we decided would not fit in the house.
Brett slowly unloaded the unwanted items bit by bit and Mom got started on the bathroom. After about 20 minutes or so, I heard Brett talking to someone outside. I walked out and asked, “What’s up? Who was that?”
“House painter. He’s here to paint the house.”
“Really?” (The previous week I had gotten a call from our landlord to let me know – a mere 20 minutes before they arrived – that painters would be coming to scrape the house. P.S. This is a project that we were told would happen the summer after we moved in. But, clearly, it did not.) Now, as we were trying to organize, clean and move out, we had to contend with added mess and people. Nice. Super, super nice.
So, we continued with our cleaning ignoring, as best we could, the painters working outside. Brett took off with the loaded truck for the nearest Goodwill, planning to return with an empty truck and the energy to help finish up the cleaning.
Soon after he left, it started to get really, REALLY hot inside the house. Then cigarette smoke began wafting delicately (hah) through the open kitchen door, soon followed by a gruff voice, “Hey! When you guys think you’ll be done in here? We gotta finish putting plastic on all the doors.”
I looked up and immediately began to cry. In my cleaning trance I had failed to notice the reason I had gotten so drippy hot. Every last window in the house had been covered with plastic. DAMN YOU #4!! You clearly hale straight from hell.
Remember, we had not lived here for over 3 days at this point. We were no longer paying for little luxuries like lights and A/C. My mom came out into the kitchen and told the guy to talk to Brett when he gets back. And then… my phone rang.
“Hello?”
“hey. it’s me.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Well, I’m at Goodwill. They won’t take the couch. They say it’s dirty.”
“hauargh….”
“Hello?”
At that point I totally lost it. How were we supposed to finish this if it was 180˚ in the house? And now we had to take the couch back with us to the new house which was already packed to the rafters in every room including the garage?!
#5, is that you? Yep, I thought so. "Good will" my butt.
“HELLO?! Alicia? I’ll be back in a minute.” Click.
Mom patted me on the shoulder. “We’ll figure this out. It’s going to be fine.”
I got up and began to pace the house - hyperventilating as I went. Good times.
Brett got back. They pulled me into the car to get out and get something to drink. I laid into Brett in the Panera parking lot making a total spectacle of myself while having a lovely public tantrum. So classy. But, over lunch, we decided the only thing to do was to go home and come back after the painters had left. They promised the plastic would be down that evening.
So, we went home and unpacked boxes, drove out to get the boys and dropped them off at home only to turn right back around and go back to St. Louis Park to clean.
We cleaned until after 10. Between the morning and the evening, we spent 6 hours there. We drove home in silence. I took a long shower and fell into our new Tempur-Pedic bed. Never before have I loved a piece of furniture more.
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