On June 1st we drove from Orem, Utah to Ontario, Oregon (this ended up being an all day drive). When we were about an hour away from Boise we drove in to a windstorm. The wind was so strong that we had to significantly slow down on the freeway. By the time we arrived at our hotel, we were both ready to crash--long road trips can do that to a person.
The next morning we work up and continued on our journey to Eugene. We drove through the Great Basin for what felt like an eternity (there was not much to look at). We did find some canabalistic rodents that would eat their dead friends off the highway, it was kind of funny to watch.
We decided to stop and get some lunch in Burns, Oregon. Since their weren't many places to eat we opted to get some food at the Safeway deli--this was a very bad decision. About 40 minutes later Andy and I both learned that we had eaten some bad food. Nothing like getting food poisoning in the middle of no where-- I'm not even kidding when I say there was one rest area during a 3 hour stretch of our drive and no where else to stop in between. The food was so bad that I was sick for 3-4 days.
We arrived in Eugene on the evening of June 2nd and the first thing we did was go to check out our new place. As soon as we opened the front door I was devastated by what I saw and smelt. I was ready to cry and began to question our decision in moving. Our place smelled strongly of weed. There were huge scratches in the hardwood floors (we had been told that these would be taken care of before we moved in). There was dog hair everywhere and the place was covered in spiderwebs. There was black mold and grass growing in the widows. The grass outside was a foot and a half tall. The place was a MESS! How could I move into a place like this? This place looked nothing like the pictures we had seen. I was devastated. I felt cheated and robbed. We opted to say in a hotel that night since the property management company was closed for the evening.
The next morning my step mom (Julie) and little brother Russell flew in to help us--and I am so grateful they were able to come. We showed them our place and headed straight to the property management company. The property management company was friendly and said they would get people over that day to come and clean and mow they grass. They told us it should not be in the state that it was.
The rest of the day was spent setting up our utilities, contacting our new bishop, setting up our new bank account, and unloading our stuff. A crew came by and took care of the grass but the cleaning crew was no where to be seen.
There was so much dog hair in the place that my throat started tightening (I'm allergic to dogs). Between my allergies and the food poisoning I wasn't able to unload many boxes.--As you may have guessed we stayed in the hotel again.
The next day Andy and I decided to pressure was the outside of the house, the garage, and the driveway. The house was covered in bird poop, the garage was full of cobwebs, and the driveway had a lot of moss growing on it. As we were in the middle of pressure washing a lady walked up to me and asked if we lived in our place and I told her we had just moved in the day before. She said that she had orders to clean it and I invited her and her crew right in. Their were 4 gals in total who came to clean and they cleaned for about 4 hours (16 hours in total between the 4 of them). They cleaned as much as they could around all of boxes but were only able to do so much. I told them I was grateful that they had come because with my allergies there was no way I could have cleaned all of that.
We stayed in our new place that night. Andy went to work the next morning and I went with him to help setup his desk. After his stuff was situation we came home to continue unpacking.
Moving is a BIG job, especially if you are moving into an unexpectedly dirty place. As you could probably imagine I spent most of the next month cleaning (really deep cleaning) and unpacking all day, everyday while Andy was at work. I still have a few more areas of the house to tackle in regards to the deep cleaning but I'm almost there. It will be a happy day when everything is clean and in its proper place.
Until next time...
