Yapping and Yowing All the Way Home

Our plans for our move were to hire a professional for the furniture and move the rest ourselves down the street to our new house: six doors away at the other end of our street.  Part of the same development as the house we are leaving, this house is brand new, so new that the owners have been busy there all this week, setting paving in the backyard and installing air-conditioning units in the living room.

The Big Move was scheduled for today, but yesterday our plans changed.
On Wednesday, a company representative for our town's one moving company came to give us a quote - and refused to offer us any insurance on the move.
            "Well, Absolutely Not."  She said, with almost creditable astonishment.  "Why would you even want it?!"
I explained - with visual aids.  (exhibit A - our dining room table. Thank You, O Moving Man with arms like hams and the hand-eye coordination of a concussed turtle.)
            "Really?" She said, wide-eyed and wondering.  "You've really seen personal effects being DAMAGED during a move?"
And she filled me with a bathtub's worth of utter nonsense about magical furniture movers who never in the whole of the company's history suffered one drop or spill or scratch, and then she about faced and beat it the hell out of there, promising over her shoulder to telephone with a quote later in the afternoon.
My sister let our her breath in a puff.  
            "WOW."  She said.
The woman never phoned back.  Yesterday, Mr Tabubil telephoned her, and she airily told him that she'd dropped the quote in our mailbox sometime during the night.We dug it out - and ther quote is twice the amount it should be for what they would be doing.
We found the whole situation rather… disquieting, and Mr Tabubil called U-Haul and rented a van instead, for Saturday.  And his friends at the office have all promised us their help until it is done.

This morning, Mr Tabubil called to set up our internet at the new place, and learned that as far as the telecomunications industry is concerned, our new house does not exist.  We're a bit worried about that.

Later in the morning I went over to the new house to see if all was in order and to see if the telephone had been connected.  Two horrible little dogs live next door - one aging chihuahua bitch and one deeply neurotic fluffy white football.  They escorted me to the front door with a sharp fusillade of yapping and yowing.  Not entirely unreasonable, I suppose.  They have no reason to know that there are new people living square in the middle of THEIR territory.

We don't have a phone line yet.  Bathroom and kitchen all okay.  The sliding glass doors to the back and side yards are so badly installed that with the doors closed and latched, the hanging venetian blinds swing back and forth in a stiff draft.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

When I left the house, the horrible little dogs trotted up the driveway and barked their little throats hoarse - from slightly less than a meter away from my shoes. Rotten manners, both of them.  They followed me halfway home, right at my heels, yapping and yowing and sniffing at my sandals whenever they stopped to take a breath.  The little horrors had better adjust to the new state of affairs fast, or they might find themselves being drop-kicked down the street.