The VanNess Vagabonds

Sunday January 31st-
We woke up gung-ho after a full day of doing nothing and decided that although still not the best idea, we had to start moving stuff. If we didn’t, we would be screwed- the next day was Febuary1st, the day we were supposed to be out of our apartment.

We went to start up the old truck and realized the battery was dead! Okay, take a deep breath- let’s just take the battery out and go to AutoZone, get it charged and bring it back. . .Oh yeah all our tools have been given away or are packed in our storage unit. Um, okay let’s ask the maintenance guy if he has a wrench (who had miraculously appeared) if he had a wrench. Even with your lack of luck, fate will sometimes throw you a bone. We removed the battery, charged it, bought it back, started up the truck, packed it full of the stuff we were giving to our friends who own the truck and dropped it at their apartment.

Then we took the Mazda back over the apartment and began loading up the rest of our belongings as the sun set. A few heavy items were left so Mark drove the Mazda behind our apartment in a courtyard and proceed to spin himself into a ditch. I was packing the last few items and heard a ‘ruuuummmmm’ over and over. . .thought to myself “that’s my husband getting stuck in the snow, awesome”! I go out into the darkness to be greeted by any angry man so frustrated veins are about to explode off his bulging neck. A few profanities later, after placing trash (pizza boxes) from the recycle bin under the tires, and spewing mud all over ourselves, we gave up.

The feeling in my toes began to fade away after one and one half hours of trying to push, rock, or do anything to get the car out of the 48 hours of snow that had fallen (chuck Taylor and flip flops were the only forms of footwear I had left- no so great in snow). One of our neighbors and his friends came to assist and pushed us to freedom. We are out of the snow and Mark says “should I try to bring the car in from the other side? It may not get stuck there. Be serious- NO! I will carry everything in the slippery snow before I go through that again. We park the Mazda and decide to finish the move the next morning.

Monday February 1st-
The next morning we woke up and cleaned the apartment. Friends came by to pick up the rest of the stuff, our apartment manager came in to show the apartment as we were cleaning, we locked it up; paid the rent for February; and headed to Cary with Lola in tow.

The car, full of stuff that was supposed to be picked up by my mom on Friday, now had to emptied into our friend’s cars and house because we weren’t sure when my mom could get a flight out of New York City due to the upcoming blizzard. We moved everything over and tried to get in touch with our accountant to see if he had finished our taxes (turns out the office was closed the whole weekend and was still closed-not good since we had pushed our leaving date to Thursday to try and get out before the snow). Exhausted we crashed in preparation for the next day’s schedule.