I'm sure you can imagine that moving three times, to three different states, in eight months provided many stories to be told. Some are hilarious. Some are pure pitiful. Some are ridiculous. And some are worthy of a "bless your heart"or two. My favorite is a mixture of it all. It's a long one, so bear with me.
I moved to Boone from Orlando at the end of February. I didn't have enough room in my car to pack everything, obviously, so I needed a U-Haul. My family had planned a trip to Disney so I knew we'd all be coming back to Orlando two weeks later. So, I thought the most logical thing to do was to get a storage unit and then have my brother in law drive the U-Haul back to Georgia. I did not want the responsibility of driving that thing behind my car. Thankfully, he agreed with the plan and I packed everything I wouldn't need right away in a storage unit in the middle of the ghetto of Orlando.
As some of you may know, I'm forgetful at times. In this case, at the worst possible time. When we left for Orlando, I left my keys in my car at my sister's house in the event anyone needed my car while we were gone. And on that key ring was the key to my storage unit in the middle of the ghetto of Orlando. I remembered about halfway down I-16 that my keys were not with me and that meant that I did not have the keys to the storage unit we needed to get into. My cousins were joining us for the end of the week so I called them to see if they could grab them. They refused and told me I could just have them mailed them to the condo to have them there by Saturday. Reluctantly, I had my sweet Daddy mail the keys to Orlando and they were set to arrive on Thursday. Perfect!
Our Disney trip was Tuesday - Saturday and our last day in the park was on Friday. My sister wanted to leave Orlando on Sunday, but I wanted to leave on Saturday because I would already have to drive the 5 hours back to Boone from their house. And I knew it would be rough to make both trips in the same day. We finally agreed to come back on Saturday, but she decided we should stay in Orlando all day on Saturday and drive through the night so the kids would sleep on the way home.
Saturday was packed with things to do. We had a character breakfast at 1900 Park Fare, which was so fun! My sister wanted to stop by the Disney outlet, and have dinner at Disney Springs. My brother in law wanted a nap. The kids wanted to swim at the pool. I just wanted to retrieve my belongings from the ghetto of Orlando. And, what we had on that Saturday was a major failure to communicate.
The afternoon started off terrible when the office at the condo couldn't find the keys that were delivered on Thursday. We were so busy Disney-ing it up every day that I never even thought about the keys or checking to see if they were delivered until Saturday afternoon. Apparently, the mail room at the condo is closed on Saturday and no one could find the packages and no one was there to ask so NO KEYS.
Disney and the condo where we stayed is on one side of Orlando. My storage unit and the U-Haul I rented were on the complete opposite side, in the direction of home.
Since the outlets and Disney Springs are both on the side of town we were already on, it made more sense to go ahead and do those THEN go get the U-Haul and my stuff out of storage. Well. U-Haul would have been closed if we waited that long so Adam and I called around trying to find another one. We finally found one in Kissimmee, which is closer to Disney so we headed in that direction. WELL. The GPS took us to a giant field. But, we passed a U-Haul place on the way to the field so we thought that MUST have been it and the GPS was just a little off. We were wrong. The address was East and I put West. That U-Haul had nothing that could travel out of state and nothing big enough. So we had to race WEST in hopes of making it to the correct place before they closed. And thankfully we did.
Half the battle was over. Except for we'd already missed our dinner reservations in Disney Springs. Now, why in the world the sister thought we could make 6pm dinner reservations AND nap AND swim AND get a U-Haul AND go to the outlets is beyond me. Rainforest Café was super nice though and said they'd keep us on the list. BUT WE STILL HAD TO GO TO THE OUTLETS. And as I already told the people who don't listen to the sister who once lived in Orlando, TRAFFIC WAS HORRIBLE. (Traffic won't be that bad, they said. It's Saturday, they said)
It took us forever to get the outlets, then forever to find the Disney outlet, and forever to look around. It ended up being 9pm by the time we pulled into the parking lot of Disney Springs for our 6pm reservations. Though we never even made it out of the car because Adam wanted to get home instead.
We skipped Disney Springs (expect for Goofy Candy Co. for rice krispy treats!) and we pulled into McDonald's for supper. The kids were already asleep so I sat in the car while Adam, Virginia, and Alabama went inside to get food for everyone. Now would be a good time for y'all to remember that we were in Orlando, Florida. Which basically feels like sitting on the sun, even in March. And my dear brother in law didn't crack a window or leave a key with me for AC as he made his way inside the restaurant. Instead, he locked the doors so we'd be "safe" which in translation means DIE OF A HEATSTROKE. They were in the blessed McDonald's for an ENTIRE HOUR. And I sat in the hot car melting. After about 30 minutes, I finally decided to open the doors to get a little relief. Except that set off the car alarm which DID NOT BRING RELIEF and I had no way of turning it off. In the words of Coach Barnett - Hotomighty!
We finally left McDonald's and headed to the storage unit in the middle of the ghetto of Orlando. We pulled up about 11:30pm and Adam punched the gate code into the box. Nothing happened. He tried again. Nothing happened. I told him to try another code. Nothing happened. We tried another code. Nothing happened. He tried the original code. Nothing happened. And by this time, we were all more than frustrated. I got online to find a number to call but there wasn't one to be found. I found the website and logged in to see if I could find some sort of answer to why the gate wouldn't work. And I did. It just wasn't the answer any of us wanted. Even with a personal gate code, the gate to get into the storage unit has hours. Which apparently is only until 10pm. Which I never knew. Never mind that the homeless of Orlando can get in and sit DIRECTLY in front of my storage unit at any hour. Isn't the point of a gate code to be able to access your belongings at any time of day or night?! CubeSmart doesn't think so.
We sat in the car debating what to do for at least 20-30 minutes. Should we just go back to the condo? Should we get a hotel room on this side of town? Should we drive home? And, we (I guess it was more me) finally decided to just drive back to Georgia. With an empty U-Haul at midnight. We pulled into Sterling Oak around 8am after a drive that seemed to never end. And those children that slept the whole way home were wide awake. And my storage unit in the ghetto of Orlando was still full.
No comments:
Post a Comment