Sometimes it's better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness

We went to a waffle breakfast in town today and it's a small town so of course everyone greeted my parents with "have you moved yet?" To which they answered "Well, sorta... But we don't know where anything is now!!!"

I can't convince them that this is, in fact, an inevitable part of moving.

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Also, they don't know how to live in a municipality. My mom is so convinced that a toilet tank which kept refilling for a couple hours is "going to keep the water meter just a-spinnin!" Like the bill is going to bankrupt them. Turning off the water to a misbehaving toilet is sensible, but my mom doing so as part of what she always does in the absence of information -- panicking and assuming the worst -- is exhausting.

And I had to tell them that you can't recycle polystyrene.

Later, in other garbage lessons (y'know, lessons about garbage), I collected the bags in the kitchen and threw them in the big bin in the garage. Mom watched me warily and, seeing the bags reach near the top of the bin, said "Oh I guess we can't throw away all this bubble wrap then, it'll have to wait until next week." I ignored her, got another bag, stuffed it full of bubble wrap, shoved that in the bin, took the bin to the curb. Dad saw me walking back up the driveway and said "You knew just where to put it!" He seemed honestly delighted.

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My dad said he'd accidentally broken one of the hinges on the grill and my mom threw her hands up and said "We aren't having any luck at all with this move!"

I barked a laugh at that. All their things and all their familial relationships survived intact! Less than 24 hours in, my dad's grilling burgers for a very normal supper and she's putting doilies everywhere, in a house that's entirely livable. I've never had a move go so smoothly!

I'm really not coping well with watching them fail to cope with not knowing where everything is. Mom can't find her fall decorations (because she doesn't want to look through the many, many boxes of Christmas decorations that it probably ended up with). Dad briefly couldn't locate his library books this morning.

They're genuinely freaked out by the for-them-unheard-of experience of not knowing where all their possessions are and not having everything exactly to their liking. I normally think I do an okay job of sympathizing with people who are different from me but here I'm struggling. Because I've never had a life where I get to be so anxious about less than 24 hours of such minor instability. Must be nice. Can't relate.