OK – it’s the end of May and the school year starts in mid-August. My wife has a job – on paper – but we don’t have anything official yet. Nothing to worry about, in our minds, as this is a common occurrence – teachers are hired and moved all the time and the DOD seems pretty good about helping and moving people overseas, especially to European countries. Time to plan our summer; my wife had a couple weeks left teaching in NC and then we could spend a little time seeing some friends and family in the US. Once we got to Italy, we were going to focus our travels around where we were as we would have plenty of time, once retired, to travel the US. And then we could focus on packing our things for our big move. We weren’t going to need to take much – our idea was to put most of our stuff in storage and bring just what we needed to live the “beach and golf resort life under the Tuscan sun.” There were a few details to work out and we would be on our way. We needed official orders, obtain (or have the government obtain) an official travel passport and Italian visa (which is required for everyone, including Department of Defense members, to enter and work in Italy), coordinate for our household goods to be picked up and shipped or stored, and make our travel reservations to the land of pasta, wine and the Tuscan sun. Things were falling into place. How hard could this be and what could go wrong? Probably plenty, or I wouldn’t be writing this.
Nothing Happens Without Paperwork
Time for the next bit of scheisse to hit the fan, getting the official orders for the new job and the move. If you aren’t aware (or live under a rock), technology has moved routine processes and services online, to some server or cloud, no one really knows where. Most customer service tasks can be done “easily” by the customer. Also, COVID impacted many office structures, including most government services – now everyone works remotely (code for taking care of tasks in pajamas with increased efficiency due to elimination of many pointless meetings and commutes.) Awesome, as long as everything fits neatly into the standard box and there aren’t extenuating circumstances – like someone has a question. If you have a question, the only way to get help is through email, producing an automated “we will reply to you within 3-5 business days.” If you have a question on the reply, the clock starts again. Our first question was, “where do I go to set up the orders” – the assumption is that everyone knows. We got a response, which didn’t work with our setup, so our next question was “how can we access the system” – self-evident, I guess. One week later and after a trip to Best Buy for some required hardware, my wife was able to access the system to enter the information to produce her orders. Unfortunately, there was already someone else’s name, who was moving to Cuba, in the record of the secure system into which she was supposed to enter all her personal information – not good. Another round of back-and-forth emails and another week later, orders are finally produced, and we are on to the next step. However, the summer travel windows were shrinking. With orders we could focus on moving our stuff and getting our official passports and visas. Since passports and visas were not required for moving and storing our stuff, we focused on this first while we started the application process to enable the people moving part (we will cover this learning experience in the next installment.) For now, we figured we might as well keep our rosy glasses firmly ensconced and focus on our “stuff”.
Beware fast moving ballgames – especially when you are older (i.e., more mature.) As our long-term plan did not entail moving back to eastern North Carolina, we had planned to sell our house. Being our fourth time in the area, we were fairly familiar with the housing market (from several years ago) – properties are on the market from 6 months to 3 years; sales don’t go fast. We listed our house with an agent, and we put it on the market on June 8th. By June 9th, we had three offers, all above the asking price looking for acceptance within 24 hours and a closing within 30 days – so much for 6 months to 3 years. Happy to have sold so quick, we started to reschedule our summer travel plans; nothing too drastic and plenty of time to enjoy a leisurely trip across the country before embarking overseas. “Knowing” the DOD would pack us and move us by early July, we figured we could spend a relaxing month seeing friends and family. Orders in hand, off we went to the transportation department to arrange the 3 parts of our household goods pick up; one small lot for immediate delivery (classroom supplies and our golf and beach attire), a larger but slower shipment (winter clothes – boots and scarves which are worn in Italy, not necessarily in eastern NC), and the majority of our stuff scheduled for long term storage.
Moving Our Stuff – In Waves
“What do you mean the first availble date is in mid-August?” We hadn’t seen that one coming, and now we were in a bit of a bind. Our memories of moving in our earlier lives didn’t match up with what we were hearing – memories are kind of funny things, I guess we sometimes only remember the good parts, kind of like how much fun and how cute that little puppy was, not the sleepless nights and messes in the middle of the living room floor. Anyways, we were told we could put down our requested dates, even though nothing was available, and if something came up, they would try and fit us in – my wife said, “Tomorrow, Friday.” However, she was informed that was a bit early, so she settled on Monday. For a second choice of not later than, she picked the following Monday – we wanted to give ourselves a week of cushion before we were no longer homeowners, plus this was nearing the Fourth of July holiday period and we knew not much work happens then. We then left and started to try and figure out what we were going to pack into which shipment, what to put on Facebook Marketplace, what to throw away, what our daughters might “need”, and what needed to be done to get our house cleaned out and up. We also started to figure out how we could “rent” our own house for a while (maybe we could stay in one of the bedrooms, with a ton of stuff) since mid-August was the first moving date available. Our timeline was starting to look a bit aggressive. We had the stuff we would need sent quickly together and some of the stuff in the winter boots and scarves shipment together – the rest was a bit of a mess though. So, to take the edge off, we decided to go down to the beach for a couple days and get that straightened out and ready for our move – we figured we were back on the slow boat and had a little time, again.
Funny how things work – the following Tuesday, now the last week of June, while driving home, we got a call from a local moving company – they had scheduled us in on the next day, to pick up our quick shipment. Things were moving again. That same afternoon, we got another call, same company, and they were coming to pick up our winter stuff on Friday. Things were starting to move quickly. Then on Wednesday, while they were picking up our stuff, we got a call to ask if it would be okay for them to come over Thursday to assess how much stuff we had for storage – they were looking at slotting us in the following week – now we were on the express train to moving out – and we still hadn’t sorted, sold, or disposed of most of our stuff – it was looking like a long week ahead – but they would have us packed out by the 9th of July and we’d be moved out.
The next week was spent in a blur – late nights trying to make sure important papers didn’t get stored and worrying about making sure the garbage didn’t get packed and sent (it happens – true story). We spent lots of time trying to sell of stuff on Marketplace (lessons learned: people want stuff for real cheap, are leery of making a deposit – they just want you to hold things, and many times they ghost you). And we separated out the stuff we would need to travel with and that our daughters needed (they maybe didn’t know it yet.) But, by the time the movers showed up on Wednesday, we were ready, at least one or two rooms ahead of where they were, and getting things packed up. They finished loading our stuff on Thursday (rather late) which gave us Friday, the 9th – closing day, to fix a few items that had been identified as needing repair, cleaning the house, and packing the car for a trip out west (we hadn’t planned much but one daughter lives in FL and one in CO and we had their “stuff” which we needed to deliver) prior to flying out to Italy in early August (at least in our minds).
Can anyone guess how much crap you can pack into a Kia Forte? After the movers, we still had a LOT of stuff left in the garage. The first thing we did was went and bought one of those platforms you put into the hitch behind your car. Big lesson learned – large luggage platforms probably shouldn’t be attached to the back of my car, especially when car and rack are loaded down. After a couple hours putting the platform together and four trips to the auto parts store, we tried driving out of the driveway to our friends’ house, about an hour away; they had graciously offered to host us for the evening. Dinner was planned for six, but after the packing and loading issues it was now nine and we were a certified mess. Seeing the sparks from the back and sides of the overloaded platform scraping on the street, we were forced to turn around, knock on the neighbor’s door, and ask if we could store some stuff in their garage, to be picked up at a date TBD. We love our neighbors – they said yes, no questions asked – good neighbors are essential for health and happiness, just saying. Anyway, by the time we got to our friends’, dinner as cold, my wife was laughing hysterically, and I left a ring around the bath tub and a post-shower dirty towel (even after double-scrubbing with soap); but we were one step closer to our Later Gap adventure. Now we could travel a bit around the US while we waited on our passports and visas to our new home under the Tuscan sun.