Hola

Chronicles of our Winter Haven Move. Day 1. Arrival.
Well the day started when we arrived to a garage that was kind of a Halloween motif; spiders, webs, death….so I ran to get the vacuum from the movers as soon as I saw it on the truck. So I sucked some death out of there and after about 2 hours mission accomplished. I happened to notice at that time that I was covered with sweaty salt but Iwas fine after the cerebral edema resolved and the stuttering dissipated.
So to my next project; the front porch. Lots of critters there; some very cute velociraptor looking things but apparently their vegetarians. On the other hand there was a lovely collection of bee hives, wasp nests, and other bug-made dwellings. I saw a guy down the street watering his new lawn. He was without shirt butwith well-tanned pot belly so I knew I’d fit right in as soon as I get a tan. There was a couple other guys out doing who knows what in their yards to so I suspect in a few weeks we’ll be a recreation of the Hank Hill show. Anyways, I approached him about my “porch city” and he advised me that he may have seen somebody “power spraying” last week; not sure what that is but it seems to have anegative impact on the life forms of interest. He said I could knock the nests down with a broom handle and shouldn’t have any problems if everybody was indeed dead. I told him if he noticed me laying in the front lawn with bees or wasps hovering over me to not panick but just bust out a 911 call for safe measure. He laughed and then kind of looked at me weird; ahh I’m making friends already.Anyways I got through that experience without any untoward effects.
Meanwhile, inside the house Maggie was working furiously on the kitchen and managed to get it completely unpacked before days end which is why I’m able to enjoy a nice glass of cooking sherry as we speak. Beggers can’t be choosers.
The movers themselves worked hard throughout the day. They were friendly enough; one of themmentioned that their last move was for a guy who had 3x as much stuff as us and it went in to a much smaller house. Apparently they left stuff on the front lawn, the side of the house and in the garage. In our case, the house is certainly larger than we need but pretty cheap to rent so we’ll work it out. If I strain hard enough in the bedroom I can actually see the dresser from the vantage point ofthe end table.
I almost forgot to mention a small complication. No working air-conditioning. So Marcel is a fussy ball of redness lyiing in his pack and play with only a diaper. Valerie won’t let me hug her because she says I stink. The technician who is to fix the a.c. is pissed at us because we stepped out for lunch and weren’t here at 2:15 when he made it very clear he’d be here between3 and 4. What were we thinking?
So we got here at 3 and are happy to say he did get here….at about 7. But after a lot of hard work on his part, he fixed the thing and it is now comfortably below 85; ahh the life….
Which brings me to the most interesting events of the day. For bathtime little Valerie got to experience our jet tub surrounded by roman columns (I’m not kidding). The catchwas she just likes to sit in the tub with the water running but we don’t plug the drain for obvious safety reasons. She did however notice a small button on the side of the tub. At that particular moment Maggie and I were sitting with Marcel on our king size tempurpedic. We then heard a very loud hiss followed by screams from Valerie who managed to spring from the tub to the floor withouttouching the side of the tub. Maggie and I sprung up and ran in to the bathroom to turn of the air blowing jets. After we both “came down” from the sulfur-induced high (apparently they never use the said jet tub) we brought Valerie to her senses and the hysterical cyring ceased. She then reluctantly got back in the tub to finish her evening cleansing.
You may recall that Marcel was on the bed with...