The college coed's classes don't start for another week, but her lease began on Saturday. The husband and I helped her load up her car plus his truck to make the trek to Austin to get the bulk of her stuff moved in... along with what appeared to be about 95% of the rest of the new residents in her 18-story high rise apartment building in downtown.
The Austin traffic was as congested as usual, even for a Saturday. Then there's the ever present road construction on I-35. And of course they've always got roads closed around campus and the capital. So yeah, that was just the beginning of our fun-filled moving to college day with the coed.
IF the move in directions had been more complete and/or clear, then we wouldn't have had to wait in the line that slowly crept around the corner and into the underground garage for unloading not just once, but twice. I'm not sure how or why, but the much shorter line at the end of the day was a zillion times slower and more painful than the noontime line when autos were stretched around several city blocks.
I had hoped to make it into the Coop that's located on the block directly in front of the apartment building to get me some mascot wear for repping the university this fall, but we never had time. When we weren't waiting in the unload line having our brain cells killed from exhaust pouring out of cars all around us, we were schlepping things to the 10th floor. Putting shelves and shoe racks together. Helping with unpacking. You know, all that stuff that's so much fun to do in the midst of Texas' summer heat. Especially when you're having middle-aged, menopausal hot flashes. Good times!
The apartment management was saved from me having a Karen losing her mind moment when we realized the coed didn't have a parking permit in her welcome pack that contained the apartment fob and mailbox key. Sure enough, we discovered she wasn't assigned parking in her building even though she signed the lease paperwork for it. Thankfully for them, that was quickly remedied. While I was sitting in the lobby waiting for the coed to get this straightened out with the office, I peopled watched at least 25 folks waiting in line for the elevator. We knew the building allowed pets, and I soon spied several dogs with their owners. I was honestly surprised to see several girls with really big doodles because these apartments are small. Our two daughters pay the same amount of rent in Austin, and their apartments are basically the same square footage. However, the accountant only has one roomie in their two bedroom set up, while the coed has three roomies in their four bedroom floor plan. So it really is pretty tight quarters for the college crowd.
Adding a big dog, even though they're beloved pets, is a lot to handle when you think about not just the size of the apartments, but all of the logistics related to owning such a big critter. Having to find a patch of grass in an urban concrete jungle, doing the daily grind of bagging up big piles of dog poo, holds zero appeal for our coed.
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