First time for everything

We are living simple, but experiencing a lot of "first time" things and it can really be draining. You know the first time you make a new recipe it always takes longer. Everything we are doing here takes longer to figure out. Where to shop. How to deal with the quirks of a new house. How to register the car. How to ride the train. How to register for school. Where to find medicine. Or which medicines will work when you can't find what you usually buy. What do you use in a recipe that calls for corn syrup because you can't find corn syrup. How to deal with filing taxes in the US from all the way here. Opening a bank account here. Transferring money here. Transferring money there. Paying bills from a distance.

and

OH

MY

GOSH

Dealing with Verizon Wireless on a REPEATED basis trying to just keep my phone numbers alive so I can still have them when I get back. And then Verizon FAILED ME and gave two of our numbers to someone else without telling me. I found out from Facebook. Yes, FACEBOOK.


In summary I am furious with Verizon. I have spent HOURS on the phone with them. Every time I call they give me a different plan, or idea, or way to handle the issue and in the end after still paying them monthly, they completely defeated the purpose. So don't call my old cell phone number anymore. Somebody else has it. Or, you know what, maybe call them a lot. So they'll hate having the number and maybe they'll give it back.

I'm officially DONE WITH VERIZON and I'm moving to Sprint. I am just SO MAD AT VERIZON.

But I digress.

I haven't had ALL THAT FREE TIME I dreamed of because everything I've done has been blazing new territory. And then I've spent pretty much 5 months planning travel itineraries and flying all over the country. So, yeah, I can't complain.

Now it's time to settle down. Juuuuust in time to work on unloading all our possessions here and re-entering the U.S. It will take a good deal of orchestration. We won't have the luxury of leaving things in our basement. We have to sell or give away EV-ER-Ysingle thing: car, beds, pots and pans, plants, shampoo, toys, books, food, and even the refrigerator. I'm starting to get nervous. We have to be at the airport at 4am. I think I won't be sleeping that night. It will just prepare me for switching time zones, right?