I’ve learned over the years of my life existence that life can throw you lemons and limes so why not make yourself some limeade.
So with that being said… let me tell you about when my husband and I moved from Atlanta, GA to Orange County, California.
Now a lot happened on that trip, so I’ll have to speed through some points and leave somethings out. The week we prepared to move, my Husband went into a diabetic coma leaving me to pack up our entire life up and place it into a storage unit. Months later we had to return from California to Atlanta for our “official move” and that is when the fun started. For starters, I accidentally booked a flight to Dallas, TX instead of Atlanta and didn't realize it until five hours before I knew we had to be at the airport. After correcting my mistake, I booked the correct flight and we made our way to Atlanta, Ga. We finally arrived in Atlanta at midnight and decided to improvise by taking rental scooters since Uber was surging and we didn't want to pay $50 to go a few miles. Of course, we had to switch out scooters multiple times as they died on us.
We finally made it to our unit, got our car and went to the hotel. The next morning was the day of our move. It turns out Home Depot did not have our truck ready, so they sent us on a wild goose chase around the city to find it. The chase finally lead us back to the original Home Depot location where our Penske magically appeared. They apparently specialized in attitudes, because every associate seemed to have one. Without any apology we were given the keys to our Penske. My husband decided that since they were having attitudes, I should act privileged. Yep, being in an interracial marriage has their perks. My husband said, Since they're giving him attitude, he should use his secret weapon, "ME". This would work down the line.
Once we paid for the truck, we walked outside and it started raining. I cracked a joke and said, "Look babe! When it rains, it pours!" At that time, I was thinking the worst part of our trip had already happened. We headed to our storage unit and It took my husband and I five hours to finish loading our truck. We then headed back to the Home Depot to pick up our trailer that would be towing our car. My husband walked inside to ask the associate to place the trailer on our truck and with an attitude she handed him a pamphlet and told him to do it himself. The associate told him that it was against their policy to help us.... and boy did she stick to their so-called policy. My husband was thinking, "Almost privilege time... "We decided again to laugh it off. I mean, we toured on the road with 26-foot box trucks for marketing programs, surely we could attach a trailer to the hitch of a truck. I was yelling, "right!" Meaning go right as he was turning the steering wheel right. Long story short, it took us 2 hours to attach a trailer. We finally got on the road.
My parents are "letter writers", so by this time my dad had already figured out the email to the CEO of Penske. I decided to go ahead and use "my privilege" to him about our issues. I heard back from his secretary within 30 minutes.
As I sent over details of the rude employees we encountered, we continued driving and stopped in Mississippi overnight. While driving, my husband kept swearing that the trailer was slipping off the road. I joked and said he was probably rusty, because we hadn't driven with a trailer in about 10 years. The next night we arrived in Dallas, Texas. I walked outside that morning to grab something out of the Penske and realized that he wasn't exaggerating about the trailer was slipping. To my surprise our trailer had two flat tires. Naturally, I contacted the assistant to the CEO of Penske again. The quickest we could get the tires replaced was TWO days. They offered to extend our truck rental and to pay for any hotel fees we occurred.
After two days, we got back on the road and everything was going smoothly. We stopped in West Texas overnight and the next morning I said, "Wow, this trip is going so great now." We laughed saying that I was probably jinxing it.
Our next stop was in Flagstaff, Arizona. Where it was raining, sleeting and snowing SIDEWAYS... all at the same damn time. My husband wanted to drop me off at the front of the hotel, so I wouldn't get wet. I went inside to check into our room and was so excited to have a relaxing night. My husband left to park the car. It seemed to be taking longer than it should have, so I went outside to check on him. I mean, he may of needed my impressive directional skills. He quickly said... "Get back inside!". I was confused, because again, we never fight, but I brushed it off thinking he was just tired from the travels. I thought, "Maybe he's hungry or something." So I quickly used the Pizza Hut app to order us dinner.
My husband finally came inside the hotel. When we got on the elevator he kept saying "I'm sorry!". I thought he was apologizing for being snippy with me, but he seemed oddly emotional over it. When we got inside the room he told me what happened. He explained that he drove the truck around the parking lot to find a spot. The only way to do so was to drive under hotel that shared the same parking lot. He didn't pay attention to the clearance of the hotel awning. As he drove under it he heard a loud screeching noise.While he was telling me the story, Inside I was thinking OMG, you have seriously fucked us so hard, but my inner angel of support quickly made me come down and turn to my husband and say, "It's okay babe, it will work out".
He had to force the truck out of the awning and parked. Once parked, he noticed the metal around the roof of the truck was sticking up in the air. He opened back of the truck to pull out our bags for the night. With a sigh of relief, everything appeared to be normal. That is until he shut the door and heard a loud crash. The sound was the roof caving in. In a matter of seconds our Penske truck turned into a convertible. Keep in mind it was sleeting so all of our stuff was going to get damaged over night.
He apologized over and over again to me. I kept telling him it was okay and that we could always buy more stuff. I contacted the CEO's assistant again and started the email by saying, "You'll never guess what just happened?" I mean by this point, the entire trip was a joke, so I figured we might as well laugh about it. When our pizza arrived that night, so did a police officer to write a report. Luckily, he was nice and thought it was hilarious. We spent the night Googling how much a 26 ft box truck cost, because we knew we would have to pay for it. The next morning, the CEO's assistant contacted me. She arranged a moving company and new truck pick up.
The owner of the moving truck company couldn't stop laughing at us when we explained the situation. He finally caught his breath and said, "let me show you something". He pointed to a PSI button inside of the truck and explained all my husband had to do was hit that button and it would of let air out of the tires.
The story ends with Penske feeling so bad for us that they actually comped our entire move. They gave us back $3700 which included our hotel stays. Meaning our move to California was completely free.
So I say that story to say, when life is hard, when the road seems tough there's no reason to stress. If it's going to make for a funny story later, you might as well laugh as it's happening. Everyone likes limeade.