My mother arrived in a Volvo station wagon last Saturday, with literally every inch of space, except the driver seat and a patch of passenger seat for the dog, packed all the way to the ceiling.  A moving van with 250 crates and furniture was to follow.

She made the trip in two days, instead of driving straight through.  She and the dog stayed at a dog friendly hotel somewhere in southern Oregon, and arrived in fairly good shape.

I had bad news; the painter was two days late on finishing the house, which meant the cleaners couldn't get in on time, which meant the movers would be moving stuff into a dirty house. 

It all turned out to be moot in the end, when  the movers showed up five days late.

The plan was for them to come to my place on Saturday and deliver a living-room suite, a bed, and a dining-room table, take my old sofa with them to my mother's new house, for her to use until she found the perfect sofa.  Instead they showed up days late, dumped things haphazardly in her new house and then dumped things at my place and left the sofa.

My mother was nervous, I was a wreck and her dog decided that she had to sleep with me every night.  I don't like dogs, I like poodles, so this was a big problem.  The dog also had a stair phobia, and my lawn is at the bottom of ten stairs.

I was at a breaking point, having gone through a major stressful work transition during this same week, as well as Mark's cancer follow up.  I was done, as they say, fortunately my brother came and moved the sofa, fixed the drier.  Did I mention we gave away our washer and drier, so we could take my mother's super fancy set, that was too large for her new place?  We did, except the new set was on the truck so we couldn't do laundry for ten days, which was a fairly big deal.  When the washer and drier finally did arrive, the cord was the wrong type for our outlet, which meant buying a new cord, and attaching it, which being not very handy people felt very overwhelming. So my brother fixed it all and told me not to freak out and even though there are still four chairs and two bar stools in my living room, that need to go to his house, I am trying to listen.