The Final Tampa Post

I think this is very likely the last blog written from Tampa where it all began. The house is mostly packed up and the last day working from home has been put into the books. Tomorrow we have professionals coming to crate the TVs, aquarium and stuffed trophy fish. Carrie and I will put the last few items into their respective boxes and we will get ready to load the truck on Wednesday. I put Quinny to bed tonight for the last time in his crib in Tampa. That thing is brand new. He hardly used it. Tomorrow it will get taken apart for the first time since he was born. He'll sleep his last night in his pack and play before catching a flight to his new home state on Wednesday.

There has been so much to do that we haven't had a lot of time to reflect on actually leaving. It's going to be hard to say good bye with so many firsts taking place in this house. Carrie and I bought the house during our engagement. And, although, the house is worth half as much as the price we paid for it our family has doubled in size and our marriage is twice as strong as the day we moved in. The Luckster was chosen from more than 20 puppies (Lucky dog!) and came home for his first night of wailing away in fall of 2007. That was about the same arrival that Q-dog came home to in fall of 2008, wailing away and hasn't stopped since. When we moved in we didn't own a table or a couch to sit on. We resodded the lawn three times and finally figured out sprinklers are what makes a southern lawn green. The third time is the charm I suppose and we are leaving with a very green lawn. We have replaced nearly everything that costs money in this house, our personal lovely first money pit; the washer and then the dryer, the air conditioner (that was a biggie!), the water heater, the patio and the stove. We fixed so many leaks and toilets I lost count. I just fixed another toilet this past weekend. But with all the repairs we will always have our special memories of our first house.

Our realtor was first home-buyer savvy and for our first gift upon moving in commissioned a painting of our house. She said that way if we ever moved we would always have a painting of our first house that we could take with us no matter where we moved to. We appreciated it at the time but I think will cherish that painting more and more as we continue to grow up and older together as a family. People keep asking me where all the gray hairs came from. Clearly they didn't have their first child in their 30s. As we move into a new house up north maybe another smart someone will buy us a snowplow.

We will miss the exotic wildlife. Seriously how many people can say they had snakes n' gators in their backyard? Come on, that's pretty cool. We've seen deer, armadillos and wild peacocks. I saw a snake eat a frog right outside our back door! We had a chicken roam through our yard for a couple of days. Well, I guess you can get plenty of that on the farm. Our cockroaches are massive. Our spiders and insects are the size of legend. The lizards are a family favorite. Quinny loves em' almost as much as the pooch. You should hear Quinny say lizard. It comes out something like lizzathardizzarths. It's awesome. The dog keeps his boyish 100 pound figure chasing them around all day long. I'm going to miss Lucky during the day sitting beside me in my office. You should've seen the time, shortly after moving in, Carrie and I had crawled into bed and noticed something on the ceiling. It was a spider as big as my hand when I flicked on the light. I was swinging that broom like Babe Ruth. Carrie was screaming. Oh, the memories! That spider could move, but Babe blasted that thing out of the park (and house).

We'll miss the visitors that were always happy to come down to the Florida sunshine and spend a weekend. We will miss the beach. I'm so happy Carrie convinced me to do the last Christmas card at the beach with the family. It's such a great photo people think it's fake. I'll miss Key West only a beautiful coastal drive away. Irish Kevin's! Sloppy Joe's! And the Hog's Breath Saloon! Jimmy Buffett lives here for crying out loud.

As we close a chapter in our lives, one might say the first, we look forward to new adventures and future chapters. As we prepare for our first in a long time, hopefully mild winter, we appreciate our flip flops one last time and look forward to building our first snowman with Quentin. That morning coffee will take on greater warmth and importance. Hot chocolate will be chic again - with marshmallows. A campfire will actually be worth having as opposed to making you sweat more. The beer selection will undoubtedly improve and a basement will exist. Ah, Mr. Man room finally will come to fruition. Big Ten football will be back and hearing about the speed of the SEC will become a thing of the past. And god knows we can't wait for the corn. Oh, glorious corn here we come. Let the jokes commence about the crazy people that left Florida to move to Iowa right before winter takes hold with its icy grip. And of course new memories will be formed as we await for the birth of our second child feet first or not. Ready or not shorty number two is coming. And ready or not we are moving to Iowa. We look forward to our arrival in a few short days.

It's getting painful around here

We have climbed the stressful mountain and I believe are standing at the apex, the summit, top of the world or bottom depending on your perspective. Today is my last trip out before the move. We move exactly one week from today. There isn't a lot going right at the moment. I woke up this morning to get in my car, which would normally be parked in the garage but since I was leaving so early we left it in the driveway last night. Well, that wasn't a smart thing to do. We had a massive all night thunderstorm roll through and conveniently left the window open. The car was totally flooded. I got in the seat and it just felt humid inside like I got in the car and entered the rain forest. Inches of standing water were in the front and back seats. That's super! I had to take it to the airport so after a house worth of towels I hope it stays dry enough that mold doesn't form before I get back Friday. On top of that it shorted out the airbag system. Wonderful! We are supposed to be driving it cross country next week. Looks like we are driving it to the Honda dealership instead to get it checked out. Oh and it only gets better from there.

Yesterday we started grabbing things out of the attic and this was taking place last night so it was already raining hard. We discovered the roof is leaking in the garage - bad. It was full leakage pouring on to the ceiling of the garage. That's great. We need to call a roofer ASAP and give them less than a week to come here, assess the damage, and replace hopefully just this section of roof. Hopefully that costs about fifty cents. Anybody know a free roof guy?

Also yesterday, while it was pouring, water was flooding into Carrie's office, which for normal people would be nine year old Jimmy's bedroom. Called a window guy and he said it's a problem with our outside stucco job. I'm sure we have time to re-stucco the house in the next week. This all went down in the last 24 hours. Of course that will require repainting the house when the job is completed. Add it to the list! It's not like we have to pack or anything.

On top of all that we thought we would score a little joy with our 30 week ultrasound appointment. We took time out of our busy schedules to make sure we got one last look at baby doe before starting to come up with names. If this kid comes early we are totally naming him Jimmy or Janey. That's all the farther we've gotten at this point. No one is naming our son (or daughter) after Favre anymore considering the foolishness and what's looking like year number two with the Vikes. So we make it into the doctor's office and junior is breached. So when our world is entirely upside down our kid isn't. He's the only one that needs to be upside down and in typical life fashion he's the only thing in our life that's right side up. Well, that's just about perfect. We were told to prepare ourselves for a C-section. Well, by all means let me add that to the list of things to read up on, get educated on, weigh the risks and then move across the country and prepare to have doctors we haven't met at a hospital we don't know the location of to get this procedure done. Can't wait!

If there is any ounce of karma left for us we need to squeeze it out and squeeze hard because we are on the road to disasterville and are supposed to be moving to nice, quiet, boring Iowa. It's looking like Dante's Inferno at the moment. I'm ready to call the whole thing off. On top of that when I checked in for my flight this morning they said they had no record of me buying a ticket. Ain't life grand?!

We need the world to cut us some slack. Carrie's parents are coming down tomorrow so they should lend a much needed hand. Hopefully we can get some of these fix-it projects crossed off the list. The roof, the window and the car need to get taken care of hopefully by this weekend yet. Our kid, well our kid better get turned around in a hurry. We don't have time for him/her to come out of the womb already pulling shenanigans. That's a Spiegelhoff move for sure, but timing is everything and this isn't the time or the place. Google it. The crazy things people are suggesting to do to work it out is quite entertaining and we need a good laugh right now. Help! Say a little prayer for us or 100.

The Guest Treatment

My folks were kind enough to drop by this week on their way to a little R & R in south Florida. They didn't want to intrude into our warehouse living situation but we insisted. After the night they had with Quinny down the hall they are really going to need that trip. He wailed and wailed from about 10:30 pm until 3:30 am. I took the brunt of that one but we're used to the occasional all nighter. I think they were happy to be taking off the next day. You should've seen the amount of coffee we went through at breakfast. And of course the next day the Quinny-monstah came out. He was horrible all day screaming at the slightest thing. Crab-by!! It's an absolute weekend killer. In our new house we will have a different floor plan so guests will be afforded a separate floor and in the opposite corner of the kid's bedrooms. Wow, a plural. That's the kind of sentence that makes you realize it's about to be 1 on 1 defense.

I took Carrie out to a quick 40 minute lunch today and after we finished eating she leaned back in her chair and struck a perfect Homer pose with that belly she's got. It was priceless. She totally has that sweet physique of a Homer, with that nice little bubble perfectly formed. You know how some guys just have an awesome beer gut but aren't really fat? It's just that belly protruding straight out in bulbous fashion. It's almost an accessory. That's what the wife is sporting this week. It's not too big, but it has that sweet look to it. It makes you want one. And at the same time leaves you wondering, "What's it like walking around with one of those?" I tell ya if I don't watch out I'm going to have a permanent one. But seriously could I borrow that for a few hours? You know just to show the fellas down at Champs?

Junior number two is pretty quiet in the womb in comparison to Quentin so that has us thinking we might have a sleeper on our hands. It certainly can't get any worse. We are hoping they are a quiet child because if this one wakes up that one we might never sleep again. I only have so many sick days and I actually have to go to the office now so I can't look like the walking dead and just flick on my computer. I actually have to iron shirts again! The insanity!

As we contemplate the idea of increasing our family to 33% (all in favor? Aye! The ayes I have it) and our share of family goes from said 33% down to 25% we wonder how Q will take it. There was a suggestion to get Q a doll so he got used to a baby being around the house. I'm not sure what the end result of the dolly carrying around would be so that's an emphatic no. I should remind my wife what happened when we got that baby for the dog. Exactly. It's a torso now. Fido ripped off the arms and the legs. That's not the kind of example we were hoping to set. I can just see Q running around the house carrying this thing by the leg as its head bounces off the tile floor at every step. Bump, bump, bump (IQ getting low, lower, lowest). Sure honey! Let's head to the doll shop. I think if the dog can man up to a life of pain and suffering not being the center of attention our first born can too. It will be good for him. Life isn't fair and no time like the present to learn that lesson.

Since we are moving I am posting a pic of the Iowa family. You can see Poppa Steve leaning in so Q is helping out by leaning in the opposite way to keep the photo balanced. That Q is so helpful! Of course that is Great Grandma Reiter in the pic.

Moving is soooo awesome

We are officially knee deep, well actually more like chest deep in boxes. Quinny is being oh so helpful. For every box you tape and write the contents on he'll come around behind you rip the tape off and relabel (in his own handwriting of course). Every task is a cat and mouse game. Our dining room has officially morphed into a storage shed with boxes stacked to eye level. We are using the dining room table itself as our wrapping station so when we sit down to eat dinner we are placing our plates on top of the 25 pounds, literally 25 pounds, of paper we use to wrap the valuables. When we moved in we didn't own a table, a couch or a toddler. Now we own all three and another couple thousand square feet of belongings. It was significantly easier to move into our home. I can remember being on conference calls with colleagues and being asked if I was in the bathroom. It would of course surprise me that someone would be thinking I would be doing, well leave that up to the imagination while in the bathroom. So you think I'm brushing my teeth and holding this conference call or....? The house was so devoid of furniture it didn't matter what room you were in, it echoed when you talked. When moving in I remember trying to get Carrie's desk out of her apartment. It broke maneuvering it out the front door. Well, that solves trying to fit that into the truck. I then threw it off the second story balcony to save time. I miss the good old days. Today we don't even have a balcony to chuck our belongings over.

Carrie's favorite moving story is when she drove down ahead of me to let the gas guy in the house for hot water usage. She wasn't used to a door that when locked would open from the inside but not the outside. She promptly locked herself out. The gas guy couldn't get in. We spent our first weekend with no stove or hot water. It was the 4th of July holiday weekend so it was extended and my brother was in town to help us move. It makes for a great story and something we are aiming to avoid by a large margin.

Tampa and Gainesville are two hours apart with Gainesville a little more centered in the state and 100 miles farther north. I asked my brother to fly into Tampa so I could drive down with a car load of belongings to drop off at the house. It's the holiday weekend so the interstate is jammed with people heading to their weekend destinations. I get 30 miles outside of Gainesville and blow a tire doing 80 in the fast lane of a 6 lane highway. As I am negotiating my way across those lanes to the relative safety of the right hand shoulder with three tires I am thinking about my spare tire and how it is buried underneath a car packed full of things to be moved. I get to the side of the road. Cars and more frightening semi trucks are flying by me as I come to the realization that I am going to have to empty my life's collection of stuff on the side of the road. Fantastic! So I get all my stuff on the side of the busiest highway in Florida and pull out my pansy size tire. I get the old tire into the trunk. I load up my belongings and I begin to drive 45 MPH on my teeny little sorry excuse of a tire. My brother lands. I have about 1 hour 45 minutes left to go on the drive. What to do, what to do? I call Carrie freaking out and think about switching cars, but as I make methodical progress down the freeway the next exit miraculously has a tire shop. I am saved. I exit off, find the tire shop. I pay a ridiculous price for a tire brand usually reserved for vehicles made in China. Oh, don't forget I had to unload all my belongings again, but this time at the tire shop parking lot (which happened to be next to a Dairy Queen with lots of ice cream eaters googling my collection of stuff) to get to the blown tire/rim. I changed the tire, got the donut back, loaded it back into the trunk, put my gear back in the car and began my journey to pick up my brother who has been stranded at the airport for hours at this point. I have now packed and unpacked the car 5 times and I am really looking forward to doing it a sixth if I ever reach my "dream home."

I pick up my brother, drop the stuff off and head back to Gainesville. Tomorrow we are to get up at dawn to pick up the biggest truck someone will rent us which we reserved months in advance. We wake up the next morning and I make a call to make sure everything is in order. Well, apparently, just like the Seinfeld episode these rental places don't quite grasp the definition of reserved. There isn't a truck. If one wants they can just keep the truck for as long as they like while racking up charges. No one turned in any trucks so there were none to rent out. Maybe I can tell that to the apartment people that said I have until midnight to move out. I find a new place with two little trucks half way between Gainesville and Tampa. It's around 11. I drive the hour down there pick up one truck because logistically we don't have enough drivers to take two and get our cars there. Carrie drops us off and begins on her lock herself out of the house saga.

I now have a truck a third of the size I need. It's after 12 noon. I have to drive back to Gainesville and I have two apartments I have to move out of. This was one of the major reasons the desk was sacrificed. There was significantly less space than we thought we would have. By the time my brother and I had both trucks loaded up it was around 12:30 am. We were left to clean Carrie's apartment. I just paid the fine at my place. We're dudes and we had been living in the same place for three years. Trust me when I say it wasn't worth saving the $250. But Carrie is a girl and unfortunately for her my brother and I are not. So even after carefully cleaning her whole apartment with a toothbrush for endless hours in the pre-dawn morning she still incurred a hefty fine. Is there no justice to this day?

My brother and I finally roll into Tampa around 3 am to move in. We opened the truck found a few chairs, closed it up and began eating dinner; wings, pizza and a couple of much earned adult beverages. Carrie broke in to the house eventually (it's amazing what you can learn with 8 hours of free time) so she wasn't on the porch looking dejected for a full 12 hours. Our new neighbor did offer her a beer so that was a good sign. Nothing like a hot shower after a day like that. Oh, wait it would be another 4 days before the gas guy could come and turn on the gas to give us hot water and allow us to use our stove. At any rate that's our gold standard for moving. We vowed that day to pay whomever how ever much it took to never take on a moving project again. For this move we have hired help. We are hoping we survive.

Here is a pic of Quinny cleaning up the door. This time we don't have anyone to take care of it and just fine us. So we had a kid to do the cleaning. He's working the front door.