MOVING ADVENTURES PART I

As I write this post, we are finally en route to our new home in Calgary. Well, sort of. After a wild and partially insane week in Woodmere, B"H, we have finally made it from the Five Towns (NY) to my in-laws in Connecticut. All week long, it seemed like new obstacles were popping up almost constantly, but then Friday night came, and each piece of chaos seemed to fold itself up and be put away in its place just in time for Shabbos. Everything was in order as the sun set on week one of our move.

To borrow a line from Monk: "Here's what happened."
On Monday, Yaakov called the moving company to find out the planned date of the truck's arrival in Calgary in order to arrange our flights, as we were informed that we need to meet the truck in Canada for Customs related purposes. The moving company would only know this information shortly before moving day. When the coordinator stated that the truck was to arrive on August 9 (Tisha B'av) we tried to change it, since that would have required us to a) travel during the Nine days--something we were trying to avoid, b) be unloading the truck on Tisha B'av c) pay a lot of money for airline tickets purchased so close in advance. But to no avail. It was not something we could change we were told. We were trying to come up with different possibilities for how this was going to work, but it still seemed really complicated.

In the meantime, Yaakov got in the car Monday morning, and was met with a blast of hot air. Air conditioner was shot. When he came home from bringing his car to the mechanic, I was supposed to go to a dentist appointment to take care of a new filling that fell out. I wanted to get it taken care before we left. When I got into the car and closed the door, I heard a really loud noise and turned around to see that the entire back windshield had shattered into a million pieces and came pouring into the back of the car. I got out of the car and quickly realized the Hand of Hashem, because the glass that came into the car had fallen into Tehilla and Rena's car seats, and only because I had this "annoying" tooth problem to take care of, was I alone in the car and the kids were spared from this dangerous event. A bit shaken up and quite thankful, I went back home to figure out this new issue. Yaakov took car #2 in to be fixed and we spent the rest of the day car-less, but with more time to finish packing.

On Tuesday morning, we were expecting the movers to come, still not entirely sure how this was going to work out, but accepting that we were now on to Plan B. But at 9:00, Yaakov received a call from the moving company informing him that our driver's truck had broken down and there was going to be a delay, now pushing off the arrival until at least after Tisha B'av. Woohoo! We were really relieved (Sorry Mr. Truck Driver.) Another day to do more last minute stuff.  A crew would be coming on Wednesday to take our belongings to the company warehouse until the truck was up and running... Nooo problem.

These first two days left with us with the clear recognition that what you see is NOT what you get when it comes to life events. What seemed to be annoying/hindrances to us (or to the truck driver for that matter,) turned out to be paving the way for something else to work out. It was a good backdrop for what followed next. To be continued...