So Sunday morning, after we finished unloading the truck, the three of us ventured into Charlotte to the mecca of all things needed for a new home – IKEA!  It was also right next to the truck return location – very convenient.

We were happy to say goodbye to the Budget truck.  She served us well, but she was gigantic and clunky, and cost a million dollars to fill with gas.  Finally all in one car, we headed to IKEA to find office furniture. 

After the vortex that is IKEA sucked four hours out of our day, we left with several boxes of office furniture only to discover that:

1. it was pouring rain.

2. our car is much smaller than we imagined.

So in the pouring rain, we played Tetris with the boxes and ended up with the clever arrangement of gigantic desk box OVER all of our heads – basically on the ceiling.

We also discovered that North Carolina rain storms are intense!  Every street we tried to turn down was flooded and blocked off by police and stranded cars.  It took forever to get home, since we didn’t know our way around Charlotte, and were completely dependent on our Garmin who just kept recalculating, recalculating every time we had to turn around. 

We finally made it home and started to unpack the mess, box by box.  Sarah was a huge help, giving me all sorts of feedback and ideas, and attempting to keep me in a positive mind frame, which was no small task.  The reality of her leaving the next day was starting to hit me, and there was no shortage of teary moments.

We spent the entire day trying to find essentials like the DVD remote and a non-stick pan, while Casey got his office set up so that he could get started with work.  We also had the poor DirecTV fella there (priorities, right?), and it took him until well after 8pm to get us hooked up.  So by the time he finally left, and we were no longer hostages in the house, we were starving and most restaurants had closed for the night (Sunday, UGH).  So we did something I probably haven’t done in like three years – got Chinese takeout.  Casey trusted me and Sarah to pick out and bring home the food, so of course it took us two different Chinese restaurants, at least 30 minutes with each menu, and about eight times too much food to make it happen.  Definitely not something I plan on doing often, but I figured I had burned about 20,000 calories through the moving process to justify a few vegetable dumplings.  YUM!

After two days of moving, sweating, driving, and just generally being disgusting, we all thought the perfect ending to the day would be nice hot showers.  (We were too tired to shower the night before, and I hadn’t unpacked any towels or anything – don’t judge).  Sarah took the upstairs shower, and I got all ready to go in the master bathroom, only to discover that the water was FREEZING.  I thought Sarah was probably just using all the hot water, so I waited for her to be done.  Only to discover that she thought I had all the hot water, and her shower was also ice cold.  Lovely.  Turns out the gas people had never showed up  to turn on our hot water – AWESOME.  I attempted to take a cold shower, freshman year of college-style, but basically just ended up dirtier, with shampoo half-washed out of my hair, and some soap scum I couldn’t bring myself to wash off.  This is what we looked like by day three (sorry Sarah!) still without hot water.

The next day we thought Chinese leftovers sounded like the perfect lunch.

One fun discovery that was made when we arrived was that the previous tenants took the microwave.  For about five hours, I pretended we didn’t need one.  I’m going to cooking school after all (said in pretentious warbly high voice).  Who needs a microwave?!?  Um, right – we do.

About those COLD Chinese leftovers – hmmm.  Had to get creative and go stove-top style – digging out pots and pans, and combining all five leftover dishes into one big Chinese food slop pot.

We got a microwave the next day. 

Monday morning came and I started to lose it.  Sarah was going home that afternoon, which meant that I really was staying in Charlotte.   I didn’t get to go back with her, and she wasn’t staying there with me.  On top of that, she was going to college the next weekend, which I was also in denial about, just adding to my emotional upheaval. 

Long story short, we dropped her off at the airport around 3, and I absolutely lost it.  Non-stop uncontrollable sobbing and sadness.  We had to go to Target when we left the airport (to get a microwave!), and I literally walked the aisles of Target with tears running down my ever-growing puff face.  Not good.

The story of the rest of my breakdown, and eventual return to civilization tomorrow.  And then we’ll be all caught up and I can show you the pictures of all the yummy FOOD I’ve been cooking with all this free time!