We successfully arrived in Indy Thursday afternoon with a
U-Haul, 2 vehicles, 3 cats and 4 men and 2 trucks!
I must say it’s totally disconcerting to have all your
possessions in boxes. Where
is the flour? Where are my shoes? Where are my dress clothes?
Just a few of the questions I asked this weekend. For all the items I packed, consulting my
handy dandy spreadsheet revealed the location.
For the movers, it’s a slightly different story. Everything in the kitchen went in boxes
labeled “kitchen” including dishes, pots and pans, spices and FLOUR.
Ok, here is your warning that I am going to blame any bad juju
on Hurricane Isaac. Seems that Indiana
is often in the path of hurricane remnants, and I got to experience the weird
weather patterns for the first time.
 |
| Outer bands of the hurricane |
Mike and I spent time re-arranging items and moving
furniture to storage. After the 3rd
load, I was exhausted and “hit the wall”.
I pulled a rocking chair out of the U-Haul truck and promptly set it
down in the drive next to the storage unit and began rocking. Definitely comforting, I was enjoying a cool
breeze when I realized from Mike’s strange look how weird this might appear. And then someone drove by in a pickup truck and
stared at me, so I reluctantly put the rocking chair into the storage unit.
Saturday morning I was unpacking a box in the driveway and
heard loud music from a back yard in the next block over. I could see people setting up chairs and
streamers, and I assumed some type of party.
About 2 hours later, I heard wedding processional music at the same time
the hurricane rains and wind began. It
looked like the wedding party was under a tent, but I couldn’t help but think
this wasn’t the best start to a marriage.
Bad juju?
And then there was the grocery trip… While shopping for a few items, I heard an
announcement about some free gifts being handed out between the produce and
seafood areas. Curious and always ready for “free stuff” (Mike’s influence I’m
sure), I headed my cart to the “big giveaway”.
About 10 people gathered around a woman who was demonstrating the
amazing fruit and vegetable creations you could make with this incredible
plastic knife. After she handed out the
free knives to all of us lucky shoppers, she sunk the hook in deeper by
alluding to additional gifts…
About 10 minutes into her next demo of a “better than
Pampered Chef and Ginsu knife” slicer, I realized I was wasting time and
started to contemplate making my getaway.
After the first person left, I decided it was my time to make a quiet
and unobtrusive exit.
What happened next is indelibly etched in my brain. I immediately turned my cart into a beer
display, and many pint size individual beer cans went crashing to the
floor! I was mortified! I was evaluating my options of running out of
the store or cleaning up the mess when the woman demonstrating the slicer got
on the P.A. system and said loudly “cleanup in Aisle 3. And that display just fell over on its’ own.”
I immediately began picking up Bud Light cans with the help
of a couple of women who were also watching the demo. Most
were intact, and we put them back on the display. A few cans were leaking and we put them on
the floor next to the display. We
covered the spilt beer with cardboard that flew out of the display. I couldn’t think of anything else to do, and
I certainly didn’t want to wait around for the grocery store employees so I
VERY CAREFULLY drove my cart to another area of the store and resumed my shopping
wanting to slip into the crowd unnoticed.
I am certain I can never return to this grocery store
without dying my hair black… Bad juju?
Most certainly!
And then there’s the Labor Day Breakfast I prepared for
friends. Since my recipes are in some
unnamed box in storage, I used a substitute recipe I found on the Internet for "Morning Glorious" muffins. I realized
after I baked them and Mike and I did the taste testing, that I should have more
finely chopped the “shredded carrots”. As
we split a muffin, we saw bright orange carrot shards sticking out of it. But hey, they were baked, and they tasted
good…
So when I served the muffins at breakfast, imagine my
surprise when my friend Stan split his muffin and then asked me what the “green
stuff” was. Sure enough there were “green shards” sticking out of the
muffin. I told him that I didn’t want to
name the ingredients, but to trust me it was healthy. Then I racked my brain
over which ingredient would be green. After some Internet research I found the
answer. If carrots are exposed to too
much baking soda, or the baking soda is not well mixed, the carrots will turn
green. At least I didn’t poison my
friends…but yes, bad juju!
So yes, it was a strange first few days in a new place. And hey, I can blame the hurricane because I’m
certain that changes in atmospheric pressure can cause weird things to happen. And I am ignoring the fact that Mike is calling me "Mr. Mayhem". But by Labor Day afternoon when the hurricane
moved out, and the sun returned, I was convinced things would return to normal.
I’m sure I’ll get the hang of living out
of boxes until the unpacking is finished…but this was definitely an auspicious
start to a new chapter!
Diane
