This weekend Jesse and I flew up to Chicago to help the Unruhs make their escape from Chicago and move down to Dallas to be with us. The minute we hopped off the plane, Courtney and MIchael had us traversing downtown and hanging out at the Chicago Zoo, which was not only awesome, but free! You actually got to see animals, which was unusual in my zoo experience. We headed into downtown, saw the Art Museum, ate some Thai food and crashed back at the Unruh’s apt.
The next day Jesse and Michael had the truck rented and back at the apt. by 9am. Hence started the crazy day of packing it full of all the Unruh’s earthly possessions. The afternoon was passing peacefully and productively, Courtney keeping everyone fed with Subway sandwiches, me doing my immense mountainload of Latin Homework, and Jesse and Michael doing all of the actual moving;)
And then, the bee–atch from Hell came. Courtney and I were sitting by the truck down in the alley where we had parked it (legally, mind you!) when out of no where, we saw a car speed around the corner, horn blaring. Inside was a lady (actually I am going to call her a “woman” because she doesn’t deserve the title of “lady”) who was so angry, she literally wanted heads to roll. We walked up to the car to see what was the matter, but it was hard to decipher any actual English words amidst all of the cussing and the still-blaring horn. Even worse, I could see the woman’s 7 year old granddaughter in the back seat, watching and hearing the whole thing.
Apparently, the problem was that there was ANOTHER Penske truck parked a little further down in the alley had been there for days. On a few of those days, it had blocked this woman’s garage. Currently, we were the ones parked in front of her garage, granting her the liberty to assume that BOTH trucks were ours and that we were incredibly inconsiderate jerks.
We tried to assure her that we would be out of her way in just moments (Michael and Jesse had just come out the door and were scurrying around trying to close the truck and move it) but she wouldn’t hear us- she just liked to hear herself scream and cuss. As we backed Michael out of the alley so that she could get her car into her garage, Courtney tried one last time to approach her vehicle and calm her down, but the woman instead started screaming the F word at her and pulled out her cell phone to call the cops.
Once the woman had backed into her garage, pulled her groceries and her granddaughter out of the car, she seemed to calm down enough for us to explain. It was then that I pulled her aside and tried to reason with her. After a few moments, she gave me a half-hearted apology which actually sounded more like justification for her actions. So I took the jump and asked her instead to apologize to Courtney.
Woman: “Who’s Courtney?”
Me: “Courtney? Oh, she’s the pregnant woman upstairs crying because of how poorly YOU treated her.”
The woman gasped and I think it was at this moment that she realized what a psycho she had become. I explained that Courtney already hated Chicago (and it’s people!) and that this certainly didn’t help. The woman begged that I go get her so that she could apologize.
And she did. Courtney was apprehensive, and rightfully so, but the apology was thorough. The woman kept saying, “Please, I just don’t want you thinking that all of us here in Chicago are “B-I-T-C-H-E-S”. She spelled this out because her granddaughter was still right there. I definitely wanted to yell, “She just heard you say every bad word in the English language! I doubt one more is going to hurt!” But I guess that’s logic- a concept that has sensitive ears and thus decided to stay far away from the situation.
But this story has an even happier ending- the Unruhs are now residing with us in Dallas! Starting in Sept. they will have their own apartment in the same complex as both Micah and Jen Snell (Torrey grads) and us, and Courtney will never have to deal with crabby, parking-lot-less Chicago again:)
Here are a few of our best pictures from the trip. You can see the rest here.