Send in the clowns
I am basically running a 3 ring circus here.
Last week Monday the new “project manager” confirmed insurance may or may not gut the place in order to re-wire all the electrical but they sure as shit were not going to pay to have any of her things moved and when would I have it empty?
So I started making calls and pricing options. I received quoted for storage pods only. Then for pack and load of the pods. Then Steve reminded me of the soot damage. Right. So then I got the quote for pack, inventory, move, clean, and store. That came on Friday afternoon. It is what it is, we said to each other and we asked how soon he could start.
Today is Sunday. We spent 1/2 the day at the fire house with our new roommate and a roll of blue tape marking everything she was willing to part with. (“I want, I want, I want, I want” pretty much that’s what we heard the whole time.) Afterwards she and S went to look at an apartment in the area. They didn’t like it. It was a long walk from the elevator. It was run down.
And they had vinyl flooring
What about the smoking you ask? Oh, she is just going to buy an air purifier. (Not my circus, not my monkeys… I chant as I ignore this latest fact)
So they come back after seeing that apartment and are really thrown. She definitely wants an apartment.
I just need a big TV on the wall, a couch to sleep on and my microwave in the kitchen.”
We know.
But looking for another place to live was way to hard for her. She shut down mentally while I was at the computer. So now the plan for this week is to actively look for apartments to move into and then hire everybody. The clean and move guys need about a week so if we could maybe get her into an immediate apartment
A dumpster or a junk service to remove the stuff she doesn’t want
A separate removal plan for large appliances, mattresses, etc
A moving company to pack and move just what she wants in her apartment.
And then the cleaning and moving company for the most damaged and most special items.
Yup. She doesn’t care about the smell of smoke. This is a hard one because I believe she doesn’t notice it. But today we wiped black soot off of a picture frame that looked clean. The picture frame was inside a box under the stairs. Yes - in the basement where the fire was but yikes.
She needs a new couch and a new TV. She needs linens and winter clothes to be cleaned. Her kitchen and food is all here. We could clean her art and call it good. BUT ALSO if we could find a place that accommodated her most special pieces and it was made to feel like home she might slowly decide she has enough space.
Maybe. Until then I’ll just take action on whatever the latest plan is and expect that it will probably just change again tomorrow. Like everything since COVID hit. What we know to be true is only true in the moment. We are living inside a circus.