Moving on up, to the sky

I don't even know where to start.
I had the most surreal moving experience ever this weekend. We ended up having to file three different forwarding orders with the post office, which probably means we will never get mail again.

Forwarding order #1: On Thursday, right before we were supposed to sign the lease and move into our new apartment, we discovered the apartment was a total craphole. The model looked nice, so we weren't expecting that! The doors wouldn't shut, the garbage disposal sounded like it had an entire set of forks stuck in it, and the apartment looked like it had been run over. We decided not to sign the lease, despite the fact we had already put a forwarding order in to that new address, and left, newborn-in-tow, on a mad rush to find a new apartment ... that day.
This apartment was on the first floor.

Forwarding order #2: So we find a new apartment we liked. Granted, again we could only see the model, but the apartment complex was much more manicured than the previous one and we just had a better feeling about it. Plus, we did not have much choice because we were going to be homeless in about a week. We quickly apply for the apartment and get sent on 9 million errands to get documents we needed for the application. We are told we could move in on Saturday morning, which was great because we already had movers booked for then (and its really hard to find movers on such late notice.) To be on the safe side, we tried to sign the lease on Friday, but the lazy leasing agent at the apartment complex we were moving out of said she didn't have time to do the five-minute rental verification we needed to finish the paperwork. She said she would do it first thing in the morning (liar liar pants on fire) so the leasing agent at this new apartment assured us we could just sign the lease in the morning and move on in. Yeah right.
This apartment was on the second floor.

Forwarding order #3: Ok, I am not even going to get into the rental verification situation. Let's just say it was a BIG hassle, and just barely made it in time (because the lazy leasing agent was asleep on her desk and about to eat a burned bagel ... I am not kidding.) Anyhow, that's a different story. We finally sign the lease, which takes about an unnecessary half an hour due to incompetence (and all the while the movers we are paying $80/hour are just sitting there waiting for us to finish...) and the leasing agent goes to do a last-minute run through on the apartment. He returns to tell us that, oops, our application was never put in the system so the apartment wasn't prepped....we could not move into it.
Excuse me? I don't think so. We have a moving truck outside filled with all our stuff, and we are moving somewhere!
So we end up moving into another apartment in the same complex ... this one is on the third floor.
I don't think this is what the "Jeffersons" theme song meant when they sang,"moving on up."

The rain: Ok, so we are finally ready to move in. The movers move a lamp inside and, boom, it starts pouring down rain.
So the movers could either stay and wait out the rain for $80/hour, or they could go get something to eat and return after the rain, not charging us. So they drove off in the truck with all our stuff to get some grub.
The problem is more than two hours later, about an hour after the rain had stopped, they didn't come back.
So we started thinking, hey, did all our stuff just get stolen? We don't even have a contract with these guys ... all we have is a lamp. OH NO!!!!!!!!!!

Whew, false alarm ... an hour later they return with our stuff. They are soaked and covered with sand and dirt....hmmm? Turns out they got stuck in the mud while trying to back out of a fast food parking lot. The truck was so weighed down that they couldn't get it out. So they tried for an hour in the rain to get their truck free. They couldn't call us to tell us because we had no phone. Goodness. Heart attack avoided.
Here is the kicker though ... since they were covered in dirt, and everything we had that they could wipe themselves off with was packed in their truck, we had no choice ... all our stuff got moved in with sand all over it!
They finally finished about 7 pm. They had been working on this move since 10 am. But they were nice, and felt bad for us, so they only charged us for five hours. Thank you!

These are just the highlights of our hellish move....oh, did I mention the toilet in the new apartment flooded while we were moving in? Anyhow, the bright side of things is we really like our new apartment and we figure that living on the third floor will force us to get the exercise we have so much trouble squeezing in (I got groceries today, and oh boy... who needs Billy Blanks? I've got a third-floor apartment and a newborn!)

I wonder who will get our mail from now on?