NYC Bound!

Well it happened. Not as smoothly as everyone would like but what would a move across the nation be without a few snags along the way, right?! N broke her foot, a crazy cat fight broke out (not between N and I) I dropped a 50lb box on my hand and the list goes on. But at 2am Thursday morning we pulled away from our apartment with 20 boxes loaded into my now former employers suburban. 2 and 1/2 hours before we needed to leave for the airport so we drove from Seattle over the bridge to Medina where we were staying. My dad had been back sleeping for hours because after the airport drop off he would be driving to San Diego with their new car... my car... My beautiful black Mercedes Benz that I may never get the chance to drive again. And we headed to the SeaTac airport. Four carts later and two trips all our luggage was at the Virgin America check-in. People looked at us like we had lost our damn minds.... At this point I wouldn't put it past us. 20 bags checked. $250 a piece... V.A. your deals are amazing! We said our goodbyes. I gave my dad and brother hugs and kisses and we grabbed our carry ons and turned our backs on what I had called home for the past nine years of my life. I finally cried. Not sobbing tears. More tears of relief, exhaustion and of course the fact that I said goodbye to the little family I had around that I didn't know when I would see again. We boarded our flight, got comfy, through on our eye masks and woke up in our new city. The city of hopes and dreams. New York City!

K our BFF and old roommate met us at JFK. B and I headed to baggage claim where I left her and took a tram to the car rental spot. Of course our rental was not what I paid for, so of course being the nice person I am, I sucked up to our amazing rental agent and got an upgrade to their BRAND NEW SUBURBAN! I bought her a starbucks card and delivered it two days later when I returned the SUV along with an amazing review to her boss who was overly grateful to hear a genuinely pleased customer.

I get in the burb and head towards the airport baggage claim. B and K had worked their magic and talked a guy into loading up all our luggage onto a 6ft cart and bringing it to the parking lot. Now here's the catch... When we loaded EVERYTHING into my boss' suburban all the seats were out and only my little bro and N were in it... now we had two rows of seats and three girls.... Impossible you say?! I think not!! The one thing my dad taught me, if anything, from family (Griswold) vacations... that's another story... is that you Tetras the "it-shay" out of your gear. So that's what I did. K sat on N's lap all 20 plus pieces of luggage were stacked neatly in the back and I was driving our butts through the Big Apple!!! First stop, the Double Tree in the Financial District where my childhood nanny was staying and where we would be parking it our first night!

We parked our car and all our stuff in a garage , got help from the bellman with our overnight bags and headed up. It was so lovely seeing her! It had been years!!! I miss her so much and I was so glad she got to spend some time with my girls. She crashed early because she had a work convention the next day so we grabbed our jackets and headed out for our first official night on the town!!

7 blocks later... or more like walking around the same block a few times we found a pub... It was empty other than a few people so we parked it at the bar. The bartender, Shannon, became our new BFF because apparently NY girls are bitches and we were the first girls EVER to ask her how she was and sit there and talk to her. Several free shots later information was exchanged and we were all Facebook friends. Good way to start our first night in NYC. N and I walked K to the subway, thanked her and said our goodnights. But of course this couldn't be the way we ended our evening! So we hopped on another subway in hopes to find dinner since we hadn't eaten in over 10 hours. Eleven minutes later we walked up a flight of stairs into the street that is brighter than the strip... TIME SQUARE!

It was almost 3am and the only thing open was McDonalds, or as the guy who rang us up wrote on our hand written receipt "MacDonalds" yeah I kid you not that really happened. We ordered food and went and sat on a bench in the middle of the strip surrounded by a slew of cops. Once done taking it all in, we headed back down to our hotel where we crashed out about 4:30am. Up by 10, N and I took my nanny to a Starbucks breakfast to say "thank you" then headed out to our new home.

We pulled into The Opal, our new home for the next 6 months in Queens and started to unload. We quickly learned that the previous tenant was "The Crazy Cat Lady" from hell after 5 minutes when our eyes were swollen shut and we were competing for who could sneeze their brains out first. I'm pretty sure at some point her cat died and she decided to preserve it because there was cat hair in the freezer!! There was also cat litter in the carpet and, hair in the heater and AC unit and large spots of sticky pee that we kept stepping in EVERYWHERE. Of course I wasn't having it so they checked us into their room suites on the 6th floor were we would spend then next four days while they replaced our carpet and had the apartment actually cleaned... Yeah they literally never had it cleaned so I found myself scrubbing the shit out of the place several times over the following weeks.

The next two days consisted of runs to Target, Costco, Bed Bath and Beyond, Macy's, the grocery store and of course the liquor store. I bought everything needed for a new apartment. Most importantly pillows, a folding wall and a huge, fancy queen sized blow up mattress where I would soon find myself sleeping for 6 plus months. I set up my living room into what would become my bedroom and officially accepted that my New York adventure had actually begun! Now that my house was set up the real fun could start. :-)