Moving Nightmare

We pulled up to a modern building with black stone columns and metal gates on the windows. I helped Sweetness unbuckle and we walked hand in hand toward the door. "Who is this guy again?" I asked Jacob. He smiled, "I can't exactly pronounce his name, but he's supposed to be the best." My stomach became a little uneasy and blood boiled a little.

You see, I don't like surprises. I like schedule. It is sometimes a point of contention between my handsome hubs and I because we are so different. He wants to have no plans and just drive around aimlessly looking at things. I want to schedule down time so that I know that for the next hour and 23 minutes I can do whatever I want- be it rest, or writing, playing with Ryot, or watching tv. We are just different, and that's ok.

It's Saturday. Jacob is happy. Just go with it. I calmed my nerves down and smiled back at him. "It's an adventure, I guess." I said as I grabbed the door handle. Immediately I thought we were in the wrong place. "Is this a joke?" I asked Jacob, but when I looked at his face full of wonder, I knew he wouldn't be responding. The walls were painted in dark blues, greys, and blacks, but with the lights so dim it was hard to tell some of the colors apart. Occasionally there was a wall with a bold geometric print painted on it. The decorations on the displayed art were dark colors and modern designs. This all seemed so far away from any sort of design that Jacob and I had considered.

"I'm going to look around." I told Jacob as Ryot and I began to walk through the store. I repeated myself since I had heard no response. His look of concentration didn't waiver as his thumbs separated page after page of modern gothic designs. Is this really happening? What is he thinking? I walked through a narrow hallway to large space decorated like a room-to-room furniture store. The only difference is that the huge vaulted ceilings that are normally caressed by ceiling to floor windows seemed like an endless pit going up. There were no windows, and few lamps. Most of the lamps on display were tinted to be darker or a color like red. I squinted trying to look at the designs as the staff dressed in all black walked by emotionless. At least we weren't getting hunted down by sales people. That was just about the only silver lining of this place.

We made our circle around the room and found more bold prints, geometric shapes, dark colors, metal, and leather. It was all different variations of the same exact thing. Back through the narrow hallway, we spotted Jacob in the same place we had left him. A staff member was opening a book half the size of the table to show Jacob the designs for painting the living room. "Ciao Bella!" the staff member startled us with his boisterous greeting. He quickly dashed around the table to kiss both of us on the cheek and then returned to his spot on the other side of the desk. I know he said his name at some point of our meeting, but before I could ask him for it again he was back on track. He spoke very quickly over the next few minutes through a thick Italian accent. I didn't catch all of it, but made out that he was the owner, and that they had pretty much planned everything out in the 10 minutes that Ryot and I had been perusing the designs around the store.

A variation of dark blue paint swabs, dark blue geometric shapes in a pattern, pictures of dark blue and black furniture with modern metal accents all laid out in books and magazines on the desk. "Woah, woah, wait. I think we need to think about this a little more. We don't even have a house yet." I reminded Jacob as we had just talked with our realtor the day before. "How long is this job going to take?" I put my hand in the middle of the table and looked back and forth between the owner and Jacob. "Five to six weeks, finito" the owner said to me and stood in silence for the first time since I had returned to the table.

Five to six weeks? My blood pressure started rising. We don't have five to six weeks. We have to move in four. FOUR. We have four weeks to move all of our stuff out, clean the apartment, and turn our keys in. We don't even have a place to live yet. We would have to find a place today and go through all of the steps to finalize that it's ours on the same day, and we still would be displaced one to two weeks while the design team was finishing our space. There is no way that this timing was going to work out.

I looked at Jacob and took a deep breath to ready my response.

Then I woke up.

I guess the combination of talking to our Realtor yesterday, creating an event to ask my friends to help us move, and renting a moving truck all before actually having a place to live is weighing heavier on my mind than I thought.

So much for sweet dreams!