Groundhog Day, Again? No, Today's Different

Graphic from The New Yorker

I feel like I just survived Groundhog Week. The Bill Murray movie is one of my favorites, because of its theme of karma, redemption and the meaning of life. But Groundhog Day this year felt more like Murphy's Law Day, and it got worse from there.

We were supposed to move the rest of the POD stored in Phoenix to storage in Prescott on Tuesday. The driver of the truck was late because he left his wallet at home in Chino Valley -- adding another hour to his drive from Prescott -- and then the U-Haul people couldn't find his paperwork. While he was en route, I called to doublecheck everything at the PODS headquarters, and they informed me that my POD had been moved to another facility in Tolleson, AZ. This was four days after I had set up the move, and there was not a peep from the company about it. So I got directions to the new facility -- 60 miles away from the old one -- and had to relay them to the driver. Then Andy checked it on his I-Phone GPS and found that the directions the PODS people gave me were wrong, and we had to give new ones to the driver. (Yes, they really are pod people, I think.)

Once we got there, the actual physical moving of the stuff didn't take long, but the truck wasn't running well (check engine light was one when he picked it up) and the air conditioning wasn't working. So his wife and baby, who came along for the ride, had to go in my car, which meant Lucky had to ride in the front seat to make room for them in back. Andy rode with Reuben.

When we finally made it back, we were all famished, and had to eat dinner. The storage place closed at 7 p.m. anyway, so Andy and I had to finish the job the following day.

The rest of the week was an uncomfortable blur of reshifting boxes, unpacking and repacking for storage and doing errands -- NYS requires their license plates sent back certified mail, BTW -- and contending with a headache that wouldn't go away. Every day was a bit of torture. I tried Tylenol, alcohol, caffeine, sugar (all the bad things), then even prayer, which helped temporarily.

I started wondering if I was going to wind up like Laura Branigan, the singer. Her one big hit was "Gloria" in the early '80s, and I interviewed her in Dallas. Later, when she was a fellow Long Islander, she was preparing to make a comeback, but had a crushing headache for a week and died of a cerebral hemmhorage.

Today, though, I got relief. I finally figured out that it was related to dust allergies. They even have a name for a severe dust allergy involving the inhalation of certain kinds of contaminated dust -- Valley Fever. But I don't have it, thanks be to God. Allegra did the trick. I hate taking it, though, and I already use a Neti pot (disgusting, yes) to rinse out my nose. I guess they have dust problems in India, too.

Today, it rained and the dust level is down outside, at least, and we're buying an allergen vacuum cleaner to replace the one broken in the move. I'm also going to church and then to meet a group of Prescott bloggers who invited me to their Sunday soiree at a local Mexican joint. So it looks like a brighter day, already.