Moving Is NOT For The Fainthearted

For any of you who were looking for a change of scenery and have decided to move to New Zealand, here are a few tips regarding the transportation of your belongings that might come in handy.

1. Your moving company is full of shit. Once you accept this as fact, you will be able to manage your expectations.

2. Your guess at how much your goods will weigh will be grossly underestimated. Guaranteed. This move is going to cost you an arm, leg and your firstborn child. I promise.

3. Shop around for marine insurance because your moving company's quote is unreasonable and designed to capitalize on a captive audience.

4. If you are moving from North America to the just about anywhere else in the world, don't bring appliances of any sort unless they are rated for 240 volts because that power converter that you think will be the panacea will eventually blow up your Dyson, your expensive juicer and that fantastic mini food processor you got as a wedding gift. Also, those big-ass, North American, side by side fridges to match our big, North American asses, will not fit into most overseas kitchens. Leave them behind.

5. When the moving company tells you that it will take 70 days door to door, you must nod agreeably and understand that if you are shipping from the US, you do not have a hope in hell of seeing your stuff for at least 85 days (see #1 above). New Zealand is the last stop on the way to the Antarctic. It's pretty far from everything and only boasts a population of just over four million people, which means there aren't a lot of direct sailings from North America to here. Our stuff visited a few ports to hook up with some other containers before arriving in Auckland. Yours will too.

6. New Zealand is absolutely gorgeous. There are no snakes. There are no crawly creatures that can harm you here, which is why I am actually contemplating camping (for real, like tents and no running water real) with friends in late January. The government department of agriculture has the overwhelming task of making sure that things stay this way and thus, in New Zealand, every household goods container needs to be inspected for a host of scary, threatening things including: Christmas decorations (those nasty pinecones, even painted and glittered ones, can host a variety of undesirable pests), outdoor furniture and yard equipment, sporting goods (bicycles, golf clubs, golf and soccer shoes), dry food, spices and herbs and anything related to pets of any sort. These inspections are not free. As a matter of fact, they can be quite expensive, especially when one calculates the surcharges assessed by your freight company for "hosting" said inspections. Let me tell you, it's not a bloody dinner party. (Please see #1 above)

7. 99% of all sea containers coming into New Zealand do not meet the specs necessary for them to be unloaded at the place of residence and therefore, the moving company will transport your container to their warehouse ($), unload it ($$) and repack it into an "approved" delivery vessel ($$$$$). If you know this ahead of time, you can easily make your way to the nearest grog shop and stock up on the necessary provisions. YOU WILL NEED ALCOHOL before viewing your "final" delivery charges. I wish I was kidding.

8. Your goods will deliver on the only day in the week when you had your hair, doctor or orthodontist appointment scheduled because that's just the way it is and you will be so damn desperate to see your belongings again that you will forsake EVERYTHING ELSE, especially when the moving company emails you to tell you that sorry, they will not be able to deliver until after the New Year and how does January 5th look and you LOSE YOUR SHIT and call your husband in tears because he's the reasonable one and you are holding onto your sanity by the skin of your teeth and somehow, miraculously, a Sunday slot opens up after he trots down to the office to speak ever so kindly to them in person and while he is grateful for small mercies, you shake your head wondering how many other desperate immigrants in Auckland will not get to see their stuff before Christmas because the general manager doesn't like that they are upset at receiving exactly the same email you did. God complex much? (see #1 above)

9. Expect some of your items to be broken or slightly damaged because they will have traveled all over the globe and been touched by at least ten people before they arrive on your doorstep. If nothing is broken, you may use that as a good reason to crack open another bottle of wine and toast your good luck. We were really fortunate. The only thing of ours that got damaged was a Bombay table. New handles and scratch cover pen took care of that.

10. The first sleep you have in your own bed after three months in other cribs, will magically make items #2-9 seem unimportant. It's a bit like childbirth. I completely expect that in eighteen months, I won't remember much about the shift at all except that the moving company was full of shit.

Driving Like Rainman

A weird thing happened to me yesterday while driving to our local mall.

Nobody beeped at me.

When we first got here, driving was a complete nightmare. The steering wheel is on the right side of the car (which shouldn't be that big a deal but it is) and we drive on the left side of the road (which is FREAKY). I can't tell you how many times I've turned on my blinker and had the windshield wipers sweep across instead. The blinker lever is on the right. It takes some getting used to, as does looking right first and then left when merging into traffic.

Then, there is the whole width/depth perception thing. When you learn to drive sitting on the left side, the sense of how wide your car is is just one of those things you absorb without thinking about it. Switching over to the right side has twisted my spatial skills into a knot. I now park like an asshole. If I were still in the States, my car would have been keyed by now. Don't even get me started on parallel parking. Embarrassing. Horror. Show.

Oh, and the traffic circles....they are absurd. You approach one and either turn on the blinkers left or right to indicate which spoke you are taking which is not as simple as it sounds because you must go left to go right. It's fucked. At the beginning, I either kept going around, unsure of which bloody road to take or I sat at the opening of the roundabout, heart pounding trying to get it straight in my head before venturing out into traffic. I got beeped at the most, there.

In this country, you are not allowed to make a turn on a red light. I'm not sure who clued me into this fact but it was long after I had made several illegal lefts into the flow of traffic and before any police officer had caught me (thank God). There are also a couple of rules regarding yielding the right of way (that make NO SENSE AT ALL) that I have unwittingly broken. For instance, if I want to turn right and the car approaching me wants to turn left into the same street, he has to yield to me. It's lovely and courteous but a nutty rule which I've unintentionally disobeyed to the sound of honking horns and wild hand gestures.

Until yesterday.

Yesterday, I drove to the mall without thinking about it. I negotiated the roundabouts while contemplating my shopping list. I zipped into an open space in a jammed parking lot and later, drove home, mentally trying to calculate how much I'd spent and what I'd be making for dinner. I was on autopilot and surprisingly, there were no beeps and no middle fingers thrust in my general direction. I have been avoiding the motorway (freeway) for fear of orphaning my children or someone else's children. Perhaps today, with my new found confidence, is the day to tackle that hurdle where the fast lane is to the right and exits to the left.

Then again, maybe not.

I'm an excellent driver. But not on Friday, definitely not on Friday.

Dude! Where's My Container?

It's been seventy days since I've slept in my own bed.

I've never been big on the acquisition of material possessions (with the notable exception of Apple products) but I really, really miss my stuff. The trouble is that nobody can give me a date as to when I might see it again.

Our container was supposed to arrive into the port of Auckland last Friday but unfortunately, the port workers voted to strike THE DAY BEFORE and thus, our belongings were diverted to another port further south. Apparently, they have been railed back up here and now, they will be COMPLETELY unloaded, inspected by MAF and then put into an "approved" trailer for delivery to the Auckland suburbs. The costs associated with the aforementioned steps were not included in the head-shaking amount we have already paid.

But at this point, Dallas and I just look at one another and giggle.

In fact, regardless of how much money we are hemorrhaging, at this point, I would pay just about anything to have my king size bed back. Why?

a) My husband is a first class bed hog and we are sharing a queen on loan to us.

b) Living in limbo is what I imagine purgatory will be like.

And

c) Both of us have been medicating with food lately. Bumping bellies in the middle of the night is not sexy.

The first couple of days in our new digs, we were giddy with the newness of it all and the fact that we had stopped siphoning my in laws' resources. Now, two and a half weeks later, the infatuation with our view has eased just a smidgen and we've noticed a few flaws that are bound to drive us me mental somewhere down the road.

The truth is, I need my furniture.

I need for my kitchen to be fully functional.

I really need my fat clothes.

Amen.

A Perfect Day

Today is an absolutely stunning day in Auckland. It's the type where all of the washing gets done thanks to the perfect mix of breeze and sunshine. It's the day when you open up all of the windows, skim the leaves from the pool's surface and turn the music up.

For some reason, the presentation of this gorgeous spring morning has me thinking about the grandmas and how much I wish they were still here to enjoy the sun on their faces.

On September 19th, Dallas's paternal grandmother died. This was especially hard news because we were still in the US and believed that we would make it home in time to see her. She left word for Dallas that he was NOT to fly home upon the news of her death. We labored to honor that wish because being absent felt really wrong. We did get to attend her funeral, though, thanks to the miracle of Skype.

When our plane landed in New Zealand a month later, Dallas turned to me and said his first thought, that he needed to call Grammy Rhodie, was chased away with the understanding that he would never again be able to do that and how that made his chest heavy.

At precisely midnight on November 24th, Grammy June also decided to leave us. It's hard to put into words how much that hurt my heart. When we arrived in New Zealand mid October, Grammy was still in the nursing home. She was slower to get around than she had been at Christmas last year, for sure, but I would never have imagined in just over thirty days, she would be gone. The rapid decline in her health was shocking and something for which I was completely unprepared.

We had services for her earlier this week. Dylan sobbed through the entire funeral. I understood his pain. Grammy June was exceptionally kind to my children.

So as I sit here, with Adele singing in the background, clean laundry on the line and bathing in the sunshine with the gorgeous expanse of the east coast of Auckland spread out before me, I'm thinking of the grandmas and wishing them, wherever they are, the warmth of the sun on their faces too.