ALLISON: A Mid-Season Move!

GREAT news to report from the Plutko household: Adam got promoted to AA! He had an awesome start to the season in Hi-A and we have officially relocated to Akron, OH. Here's the thing. I love baseball and I obviously love my husband even more… but moving in the middle of the season is freaking HARD and STRESSFUL. Yes, the all caps are totally necessary. Don't believe me? If you can hang with me through this [long-ish] post, you may have a little better understanding of the anxiety and complications of having to move without warning. 

Cut to: a lazy Sunday morning in Lynchburg, VA. As I was getting ready to go to the game my phone started buzzing. I looked down to see that it was Adam calling and in the three seconds that I had to process that he was calling and pick up the phone I said a quick prayer to sweet baby Jesus that A. he wasn't hurt and B. that he was getting promoted. Thankfully, it was the latter and he was home within the hour! We had the afternoon together and he drove his car to Akron, OH the next day to meet up with his new team. Most people don't realize that these moves happen THAT fast. We were lucky to even have that afternoon together before he took off. Last season we got a couple of hours (insert monkey emoji covering his eyes here) before he left for our new town.

And so began my now traditional emotional cycle that accompanies a mid-season promotion: first comes excitement, happiness and optimism for the first 24 hours which is then quickly followed by stress, anxiety and a MAD scramble.

SUNDAY: After I got the call from Adam my mind immediately went to all of the things that were going to have to be done- I mean, I had two suitcases packed by the time he got home from the field. True story. But, first things first. CALL MOM! Thankfully, I have a mom that will drop everything at any time to come and help me pack up our life and drive to a new town. She’s definitely saved the day more than once. After her flights were booked, Adam and I got to enjoy the afternoon together- a novel concept.

MONDAY: I sent Adam on his merry way up to Ohio. Thankfully, the Indians let him drive his own car up there, which was one less (VERY BIG) thing that I had to worry about moving across three states. I also had to call the owners of the gym that I was coaching at and quit my job. Happy Memorial Day to them, right? Since it did happen to be a holiday, I was forced to put off cancelling/re-starting bills, finding a new place for us to live and renting a trailer to drag our stuff around. Since all else failed… it was pool time for me. 

TUESDAY: I had to go to the leasing office and see if I could talk my way out of our (minimum term) four-month lease. FYI- I hate breaking rules/confrontation and this kind of stuff makes me break into an immediate sweat. When we signed our initial paperwork, Adam explained that there was a possibility that we wouldn’t be living there for the full four months and asked what would happen if we DID have to break the lease. Answer: lease buyout. UGH. What kind of newlywed/minor league couple has $2,000+ to spend on an apartment that they’re not even living in? Spoiler alert: almost nobody. Our compromise was that we would go ahead and pay the rent for the month of June and if they could get someone to fill the unit we would get refunded for the portion of the month that new people took over. SO, if anyone is looking for a nice 2-bedroom place in Lynchburg, LET ME KNOW!

The rest of the day was spent packing, picking up my momma from the airport and visiting the gym that I had been working at so that I could say goodbye to the group of munchkins I had been coaching for the previous five weeks.

WEDNESDAY: Here is where things really started to get crazy. Adam and I almost always have more trouble than most finding an apartment that is not only big dog friendly but that also allows German Shepherds as they are more often than not on a “breed restriction” list. Womp womp. Short-term leases are also hard to come by but are necessary during season. PS: have you ever tried to find a place to live in a town that you’ve never been to? It can be a total crapshoot. I mean, who's to know where the hood is, right? We found a place that allowed Germans but had a 6-month lease minimum and it was going to be a month and a half of rent buyout if we broke the lease. We couldn’t seem to find a better option, so we sent in an application and we were going to figure out what to do about the buyout later.

Apparently my official name change hasn’t been fully processed (after 6+ months) with the credit-checking bureau that this particular complex used so my credit check came back with a fraud alert. According to them they couldn’t confirm that I am in fact Allison Plutko, so our application was denied. Back to being homeless. Adam was running around Akron trying to work something out and I called (enter a Lebron James voiceover here) "not one, not two, not three," but SEVENTEEN apartment complexes to see if they allowed our moose dog and/or would do short-term leases. I finally struck gold on lucky number eighteen. They could do a 3-month lease (the remainder of the season) and they allowed Germans. Bingo. On top of all of this, Adam was making his AA debut that night and I was scrambling around trying to do our application before someone else got to it! 

THURSDAY: After the mad stress of the apartment hunt I figured I had to be in the clear with moving obstacles. BOY, was I wrong. After a morning of errands and cleaning the apartment, my mom and I went to pick up our U-Haul trailer to attach to my car and pack up our stuff. We got back to the apartment and loaded it up- we don’t travel with furniture or anything so it’s mostly suitcases, plastic totes, cleaning supplies etc. Easy enough, right?

Once we were finished loading up, we were going to drop off our cable/Internet equipment and that’s when disaster hit. We were leaving the parking lot when BANG! an entire side of the bracket that attached to the frame of my car (which then attached to the hitch and then to the trailer) came COMPLETELY OFF. My car was entirely immobile, we couldn’t detach the trailer, NOTHING. STUCK. NO WAY OF LEAVING VIRGINIA. Without giving you the gory details of our several lengthy and (for them) very unpleasant conversations with U-Haul customer service, my mom and I proceeded as follows: took a cab to the local U-Haul, rented a truck that was way too big but was the only thing they had available, took everything out of the trailer, transferred it in to the truck, detached the trailer from my busted hitch and finally POURED A GLASS (or three) OF WINE. 

FRIDAY: I had to have the maintenance guys at our apartment complex detach the bracket from my car since U-Haul “couldn’t because it was attached to my personal property." Don’t even get me started on that… but, the guys didn’t have the right tool to detach it completely so I had to jog to the local tool shop (remember, my car was immobile), buy the necessary part and jog back- all before 9:00am. People were honking at me, I was sweating, I was carrying tools; clearly it really was a shining moment in my life. I also had to call someone to come pick up the empty trailer since I had no way of getting this trailer back to U-Haul and I certainly wasn't going to re-attach anything to my car. Once the guys detached my busted bracket and someone had come and picked up the trailer, we did some final loading up and finally headed out. About 8 hours of Max barking at 18-wheelers later (super great since we were on interstate almost the whole way) we made it to Akron. 

The next few days included, but were not limited to: air mattress sleeping, round two of unpacking and enjoying the three days I had with my husband in our new home before he hit the road for a week. This move may have been challenging and hectic but I'm happy to do my part so that our little family can stay together during the season because as we all know, similar to baseball, all of the important things happen at home. 

Cheers y'all! Xoxo,

AP