Loom Rescue

A Crowdfunded Delivery and Travelogue

Day 1: Attempting to Obtain the Van

4/27/21

Every journey begins with doing the laundry. What's clean that can be packed? Did you remember to drop off and pick up, or do you need a trip to the laundromat, or are you fortunate enough to be able to run a last load in the utility room after you shower and can wash the jeans you were wearing earlier that day? How minimal can you go? Extra socks are not negotiable, do you have enough clean?

I got the cooler washed out and bleached, and left it sitting in the garage to dry and air out, so we can carry our own food and not have to stop for more expensive and dubious options along the way. Laundry in the dryer. I disconnected the old broken washer, that can't complete a spin cycle without unbalancing and shutting down, so we can swap it out for an old but functional washer in the garage once we get the appliance dolly.

No battle plan survives contact with the enemy. And U-Haul is most definitely the enemy.

The U-Haul Debacle

The Fedi posts I put up as the situation occurred tell the story well enough. I’ll add comments where I feel it necessary.

4:15P:
WanderingBeekeeper - At Easy Towing in La Vergne to pick up the delivery van for the New York trip, and they've screwed up the reservation. Trying to figure out what we do now. Fucking u-haul.
4:58P:
WanderingBeekeeper - Easy Towing, 670 Old Nashville Hwy, La Vergne TN, lost the reservation, it's just gone. We're trying to find another van we can pick up in the morning. All this work by so many people and the loom is going to end up in a landfill because someone at a U-Haul franchise screwed up.
6:09P:
WanderingBeekeeper - We've worked a three way finagle and are picking up a van from Enterprise in the morning. The trip will still happen. But after this, and given other bad experiences, I'll never rent from U-haul again. Excuse me, I need to go clean up, my forehead is bloody from banging it on my desk in frustration.

I don’t handle frustration well to begin with. I’ve got a low threshold, and if it gets bad enough, I go into a full-blown meltdown. We were off sequence and we hadn't even set off yet. The washer was supposed to be done. Instead, the old broken one was still sitting disconnected in the utility room.

End of Day Summation

We're picking up a van tomorrow morning, assuming our luck with truck companies doesn't continue to suck. Friend on FB pointed that out tonight, that we have crap luck with trucking companies. It sure looks like a pattern, but then humans see patterns where there aren't actually any as a side effect of how we organize information or something like that, can't be arsed to look it up right now. Fucking long day, had a meltdown when I discovered the reservation was gone, still recovering. Will be wearing my new purple Neurodivergent AF t-shirt with the lemniscate tomorrow. I have got to find a psychiatrist and get meds, flattened affect is actually the idea here. I need to extend my frustration tolerance, and if that means getting my IDGAF threshold cranked up, I'm okay with that. It's only 8:30p, and I have stuff I could be doing, but I'm just too burnt out to handle anything more tonight.