OUR STUFF

Today is the day our stuff was delivered. 12 weeks and 2 days after it pulled out of our driveway in a 40 foot, sealed container, it arrived, here in Todos Santos in a 32 ft truck. Hmm.... our first alert something may not be right. We knew customs had been through things, but how they shrunk our stuff into a 32 ft truck, we could not imagine.

We knew the truck was to arrive this morning so in anticipation we drove to the Pemex, the national gas station, to see if our CROWN RELOCATION truck may be there. We had heard that sometimes truckers sleep there over night. Sure enough, there it was. There were three guys, still asleep inside, with doors open so they could get some air. It was 8 am and Maurice woke them up. We got their coffee order from their yawning heads and I went inside the OXOX store at Pemex to get them three café negros, with pane dulce. The pane dulce was my idea. I thought pane dulce (sweet bread) which are donuts, of sorts, would be nice since we woke them up.

We all drove to the place we will be storing about half our things until our place is done. We rented two storage units. The rest of our things will be brought to our bodega. Some to use for “living” and the rest are Maurice’s tools.

Once the back of the truck was opened the first thing to be unloaded was a beige “suede” sofa sleeper we bought just before we left. It is for our bodega. It was ripped along an edge and the rip was stained with red. Curious...?...Must have been dragged along something red. The next item to be unloaded was our really good, really expensive down filled sofa. The arm was ripped. Next we unload an antique buffet with wood gouged out of it. O.K. I am now hyperventilating!!! The first three items are damaged. With the three big pieces removed from the end of the truck we could look in and see how terrible it was packed. The more we removed the worse it became. It looks like they literally threw things on top of other stuff. Two antique floor lamps had the tops broken right off the poles. We had boxes upon boxes of fragile items, marked FRAGILE and they were squished down under heavy pieces of furniture. We bought 30 plastic bins to neatly store things in. Almost every single one of them was broken.

Good news is that the sentimental antique things that REALLY REALLY matter to me were not damaged. THANK GOD!!! No, I really did. I know it was selfish, but I did.

Bad news is how do we even begin to get compensated for all the broken and damaged things?? Over the next few days we will go through boxes and figure out exactly what we are dealing with. We did purchase insurance but I am guessing they will blame CROWN RELOCATION since they re-packed our stuff. If it would have stayed in the 40 ft container we would have been fine. In the meantime at least we know our stuff wasn’t stolen…oh except for the rest of the stuff that filled the 40ft container! Wonder who got all of Maurice’s shelving ?? Maurice's party tent?? Maurice's drill press?? Maurice’s trailer......?? If we see it on the back of a truck I think Maurice would not longer be “sweet Maurice!”!! Maurice knows there is no hope in hell that we will somehow be compensated, according to him was just plain and simple theft. There is so much missing that the guys on this end were pointing out on our original packing slip “numero 259 is not here”...along with about 35 other numbers. What is in these things we still have to cross check, figure out, and try to get some type of resolution.

We are certainly living day to day on a roller coaster. Really, really UP..and now..and now as the roller coaster is shooting down I think I am going to throw up.

P.S. No tsunami here. Since we have no TV if we were not told of what may be coming, we would have never even known. A lovely sunny day...albeit a terribly emotional one.