Furniture... tick!

Dear reader, Friday was probably the biggest day of the 51 we've spent in the US so far (not that I'm counting). Yes, almost two months after we packed up our stuff and started living out of suitcases, our shipping container full of furniture and possessions was due to arrive. What exactly would the promised "full service unpacking" involve? Read on to find out...

Now there was one last-minute challenge to this particular event: our road here in Palo Alto, Hawthorne Avenue, is a pleasant, tree-lined backstreet. With the rock-hard suspension in my cute little Toyota 86 (yes, the one with the special lowering springs and stiffened roll-bar - Helen still doesn't know about any of this), I couldn't help but notice that the road surface wasn't in great condition, even for the US (this country will be great once it's finished). So, our friends at the Palo Alto council decided to resurface it, suspending parking outside the house for 2 weeks. And yes, this was one of those weeks.

Helen said, "Are you going to tell them they can't park in the road?". I said, "Not until they've committed to come on Friday!".

Our intrepid unpacking crew came from two separate companies: Penn's Professional Packing would drive the shipping container here on a truck, unload everything, and take it out of the boxes; Home Sweet Home would attempt to find homes for everything, lining the shelves along the way, and also getting us some lunch. Our first arrival was Emily, our site manager from Home Sweet Home. Now leaders are born, not made, and I'm pretty sure Emily was born a leader. She told us what was going to happen and who else would arrive in due course.

Next up, the crew from Penn's arrived - Jasmine and her two helpers. It turns out Jasmine was also born a leader; she was very much the heartbeat of the Penn's crew. Honestly, that's putting it charitably; she was the heartbeat if your heart is an organ that chivvies up the rest of your body and gets your other organs doing their jobs properly.

Quite soon, the shipping container turned up too. This was an odd moment - the last time I saw this metal box was on the verge outside our house in the UK. I checked the numbers; it was the same metal box!

Yup, the numbers match!

Finally, Jean, a Director from Arpin, the company overseeing the move, also arrived. I have to say that Jean was also probably born a leader. Jean's role is in Business Development (that's a posh word for Sales, folks), so she doesn't normally come out to the moves. I guess that would explain the power dressing.

The team from Home Sweet Home then came along, one by one. Kerri, Amanda and Stephany all arrived, and it became clear that there's some secret initiation you have to pass to work for Home Sweet Home. Firstly you have to be really, really tidy in some way, and secondly, you have to really enjoy making things tidy. So four equivalents of Marie Kondo were let loose on our possessions as Penn gradually bought them into the house. Most of the Kondo magic was focussed on the closets and the kitchen; it's quite possible they'll never look that good again, and they certainly spark joy in me. Helen's noticed her clothes are filed according to colour palette, and true to Kondo principles, they're all visible as soon as you open the closet doors. The built-in closets are something to behold here anyway - we have three, each bigger than the one wardrobe we have back home, so we really did not need to worry about the fact that we put all our wardrobes and chests of drawers into storage.

Perhaps the best news is: all the good stuff arrived in tact:

Stephany must have been a junior school teacher at some point. Her speciality was shelf-lining: cutting lining material to match the drawers and shelves in the kitchen, and ensuring it all fitted perfectly. Now, you or I (well, I anyway) would have just hacked up the lining with the biggest scissors on offer (well, to be honest I'd have done it with nail scissors if that was all that was available), but Stephany had both her own guillotine and her own cutting mat, with her name and her phone number stencilled on it. This. Was. Serious.

After several hours of unboxing and packing away, we were left pretty much installed in the house, with just a couple of rooms needing further attention: what we're now calling the 'craft room' needs some work, and the spare bedroom has a bunch of spare bedding in it which needs sorting through. All the important stuff - i.e. my guitar amp and my computer monitor - was up and running. Some other stuff that we might need at some point (you know, beds, sofas, saucepans, that sort of thing) were also set up perfectly, which was a bonus.

And during all that, we didn't have a single problem with the folks resurfacing the road. It turns out they had been preparing all week, ready to lay the new tarmac on Saturday (more to come in a future blog), and didn't have much to do on Friday. Once again, things had worked out well for us.

On a rare serious note for this blog, Helen and I looked at each other this weekend and agreed that we're actually further along our American adventure at this point than we thought we would be. Of course, we've had setbacks, but they have been overcome in the end. Now we have our possessions, we're able to say that Project Move is more or less complete after 2 months - next, on with the adventures!