My furniture and 50 boxes of my stuff have finally arrived in Park City! They arrived Thursday!
What a fucking saga! My new boyfriend is Sergey, the guy driving the truck with all my stuff in it. He and I have been texting as he drives across the country estimating and re-estimating how long it will take him to drop and pick up loads in Chicago, Denver—he is not crazy about driving across Nebraska—and Grand Junction and then to Park City.
He was the one who had to deliver the bad news about how I had to pay ANOTHER grand on top of the unexpected grand I had to pay at pickup. It is a rip-off business but Sergey was just the messenger and the deliverer.
So, here is how it went down. First of all, every once in a while a very nasty piece from the past of the tragicomedy of my life escapes the dark pit that I escaped and bites me in the ass and drag me back into that pit. I am out of the pit but the mind is a creature of habit and is used to me being in there.
So that happened Wednesday night, keeping me up until 2 a.m. And then my next-door neighbor was warming up his truck at 5:30–and it is not a noisy truck, it was just that I was sleeping so lightly—and that woke me up. So, so much for sleep.
And THEN, at 10, my boyfriend Sergey calls and among other things delivers the bad news that I owe $904 more than what it says in the only bill I got.
Now the good thing was that I did not have to go to Park City to receive my delivery. I did not want to go because I am really isolating until after I get my immunotherapy infusion Jan. 27. After that, it’s drinks for everybody at the bar with the best music in town with me dancing on the tabletops!
So Sergey said, “Kate, Kate, no problem.”
No need for me to come. So that had happened Tuesday and that was a MASSIVE relief.
So after Sergey gives me the bad news about the extra money—which frankly, was not a surprise—I call David, at Great American Van Lines, which took custody’s of my stuff from Mega Moving which moved my stuff from my New York apartment, and is storing it in Jersey City, about the extra money. He and I have become phone pals, although I trust him as far as I can throw him. One reason is because the first time I talked to him it sounded like he said his name was Oren.
So I call him and I say, “Can’t we split the difference?” I even play the cancer card. That I hired an organizer to pack most of my stuff and my valiant daughter and her long suffering boyfriend and my bighearted friend also packed and shipped stuff because I was getting treatment in Houston and that I couldn’t be at the drop off because I was isolating.
I also reminded him that the Mega Moving guys who moved my stuff out of my New York apartment were toking up every trip to the truck and drinking enough alcohol that my organizer said the entire apartment smelled like a frat party.
Part of my deal had been one month’s’ free storage after the movers picked up my stuff Dec. 10. Great American was going to charge me $200 for storing my stuff in Jersey City from Jan. 9 through Jan. 11, which was when Sergey picked up my stuff. However, after I throw down the cancer card, David/Oren, clearly believes in karma, couldn’t drop that $200 charge fast enough! He couldn’t do anything about the moving bill, though. Which I have yet to see.
So THEN, Sergey gets to the Park City and I try to Zelle him 1900 bucks. Zelle, it turns out, has a $1000 limit. I call my bank. After 20 minutes on hold, I get a service representative who has to read through an entire script. Now remember, my guts are being ripped out by one of the demons of my tragicomic past. So I am crying while she goes through her script and then tells me that the bank can’t do anything about it, I have to call Zelle. Which tells me I have to go to my bank.
So then I ask Sergey, who is, with incredible good faith given the rip-off business he is in, has arrived at Park City Storage and is ready to start putting my stuff into my storage unit even though he has only gotten partial payment.
But he can’t talk about Venmo, he needs the elevator code. So I call Lisa, my girlfriend at Park City Storage, who says, “Yeah, I told him what he has to do to run the elevator but he said, ‘yeah, yeah, I’ve run these before.’” But the Park City Storage elevator is different from others. So I text Sergey the code and other stuff he has to use to make the elevator work and then ask him about Venmo.
He does not have a Venmo account.
Then he sends me a Venmo address—it is his son Vlad’s— so I send Sergey-Vlad a dollar. He gets it. So I try to send the next $902. Venmo won’t let me because I am over my $4999 weekly limit because I paid my first and last month’s rent for my new home.
At this point I have stopped crying because tears are doing me no good right now (I did not cry when I was taking to Oren/David, Sergey or Lisa). The only way to get help from Venmo is to go on the chat. I am number 33 in line. But I know from trying to pay my rent last week that the line goes fast and it does.
Kris R., comes up. “I am here for you,” he keeps saying. Well, I think, it’s good to know that somebody is! Anyway, my limit will expire, he tells me, in three or four hours.
Sergey is busy unloading the truck and will be done soon. I don’t have three or four hours. I text a few of my brothers to see if they use Venmo. One does. He’s ready to do it.
His bank loses its connection to Venmo.
I am getting increasingly desperate. Then one of my daughters responds to a text I had sent earlier. And I realize that I can transfer money from my account to hers and she should have instant access!
She, of course, is an expert on Venmo. “Give me the address and the last four digits of the phone number,” she says in a text.
Voila. Sergey’s son Vlad gets my daughter’s Venmo payment!
And then about 15 minutes after Sergey is on the road —he is headed to the Bay area!—and calls me to tell me how he was careful not to stack the boxes too high and that the furniture is on one side and the boxes are on the other, Venmo lets me Venmo Vlad fifty bucks for Sergey to do something nice for himself! road and calls me to tell me how he was careful not to stack the boxes too high and that the furniture is on one side and the boxes are on the other, Venmo lets me Venmo Vlad fifty bucks for Sergey to do something nice for himself!
Note, the dawn photo is from this morning’s run. And guess what. I am finally actually running. I can now do my first mile without stopping, which is the first time in months. And then I run/walk the rest.
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