Where’s my stuff? — Anna moves to Chicago

Mark and I helped Anna move to Chicago at the beginning of March. Her new company gave her relocation money that included paying for the movers, so we didn’t have to do any of the heavy lifting as we have so many times in the past with her and our sons’ many moves over the years.

We drove to Chicago the day before the moving van was scheduled to arrive, Anna’s car packed with necessary and fragile items.

 

A new take on “bed-in-a-bag”

After arriving at her new apartment and lugging our survival supplies up three flights of stairs,

First stop – Chicago pizza

we headed out and walked a few blocks to Clark Street where amongst the shops, bakeries, and bars, we found Calo’s, a restaurant that served excellent Chicago-style pizza.

The bare necessities

Well-armed with paper products, leftover pizza in the ‘frig, and our electronic devices,

Waiting

we settled in for the evening to wait the arrival of the moving van in the morning.

A rear window

The weather forecasters were calling for snow. No big surprise this year. You can barely see that the snow had started by morning.

Snow delay

These rear windows to Anna’s apartment tell the story. And the early morning arrival of the moving van became a hopeful wish,

and then a disappointment, as the day dragged on and Anna continued to ask, “Where’s my stuff?”

All the comforts of home

We passed the time and entertained ourselves with our iPhones in the comfort of collapsible lawn chairs.

Boxes and paper

Alas, the stuff arrives. It’s packed in boxes.

It’s on the bed,

in the bathroom,

and on every available surface area. But it is here. We spend the rest of the day helping Anna unpack with the goal in mind of emptying and then removing empty knocked-down-flat boxes so she wouldn’t be suffocated by stacks of disarrayed boxes in her cozy apartment. Then we tried out another local restaurant for dinner. In the morning Mark and I head south for home and our plane to Arizona in the morning. (The tickets for the Red’s spring training in Goodyear, AZ  purchased before any of Anna’s job-search and relocation were more than a passing gleam in her eye.)

We drove away, leaving Chicago, and Anna who was happily settling into her new home, behind–the yet-to-be-explored possibilities making it all worthwhile.

 

This post is part of a continuing series – Anna moves to Chicago.