How I Spent My Summer "Vacation"

Hello lovely Scribble Chicks readers!
Yeah, it's been a while—a long, long while, and I apologize for being majorly M.I.A. this summer. Truth be told, I've really missed y'all, and I'm glad to be back in the blogging groove.

I don't know about you, but I'm in major denial when I look at the calendar and see that it's August 12th! I mean, where did the summer go?

Oh yeah, I was MOVING (more on that in a minute, I promise)!

Remember when you'd head back to school with your bouquet of newly sharpened pencils and composition notebooks and your English teacher decided that your first order of business was to write an essay about how you spent your summer vacation?

Yeah, I was always a bit of a dork because I really enjoyed that assignment—even if the bulk of my summer days were spent babysitting or holed up in the basement of our local library, reading everything and anything that looked interesting to me.

Even then, I loved writing, and obviously, I still do. So with this blog post, I've decided to take on that assignment...how Christa Banister spent her summer "vacation."

When you're working for yourself, summer days are really just like any other work days—just hotter. And this summer, I had the pleasure of adding several extra tasks to my weekly to-do list: packing up our entire home, arranging for movers to come and pick everything up, and of course, finding a new place to live, setting up new utilities, cable service, and the list went on and on and on. And sadly, because my hubby's promotion required him to be in Dallas only two weeks after we got the news, we had to spend an entire month of our summer apart, which definitely wasn't fun in the least.

As you can probably imagine, I was a mess. I spent the majority of the summer days stressed out and in tears—not a pretty sight. And I have to say, while the evil packing tape and I finally became friends, I hope I won't have to pack another box for at least two years—if not longer.

And just when things were finally supposed to settle down (that was July 2, when I officially arrived in Tejas and was reunited with my beloved), we ended up having to wait three weeks for our movers to even show up with our stuff. Cue: living out of a suitcase.

Yeah, our movers had told us exactly what we wanted to hear when we booked them: It would only take a week, not a day longer for everything to arrive. But alas, that was only the beginning of the craziness that would go down. Needless to say, I didn't do well with the whole "patience is a virtue" adage after spending almost every day on hold with these jokers.

Little did I know, however, that wasn't going to be the last time my patience was tried. Once our stuff actually arrived on a sunny Sunday afternoon, the majority of it was broken—including major pieces of furniture, our flat-screen TV and countless dishes—not exactly the way we'd envisioned settling into our new home.

Of course, the experience was a valid reminder that stuff is really just that—stuff. But it was still heartbreaking to start my life in Texas in a place that looked like it had been ransacked by looters.

In the past week or so, though, things have been slowly but surely getting back to normal. All the broken stuff is in the garage, just in case the insurance company wants to get a better look. Our bed and TV have now been replaced. Internet and cable has been installed. The pantry is no longer empty. Our yard is now (almost) a lovely shade of green instead of a homely yellow. I no longer sit on hold for at least 30 minutes with my least favorite movers in the whole world.

In three words: Life is good.

I'm still getting adjusted to living in the Dallas metroplex. It's way, way too hot for my pasty, pasty skin's liking, (but I can't wait for the winters to be sooo much warmer) and the drivers are more than a little nuts. But after a little while, I think I may actually like the place—or at least that's what I've spent my summer "vacation" thinking about...the day that I will.