Yesterday Danielle and I moved from our apartment into a friend’s house, where we’ll be staying for three weeks.
This was possibly the worst move I’ve ever attempted.
The move began 6 days before our lease expired. We rented a storage unit from Uncle Bill’s Self-Storage and got a nice, climate-controlled 100 ft2. space to keep most of our possessions. Danielle and I worked hard to pack things starting as soon as the 4th (our lease was over on the 9th).
For months my wife had been hoarding boxes from her old workplace. Thank goodness she did, as we ended up using dozens upon dozens of boxes of varying sizes to succeed in this move. We were feeling pretty good about our amount of preparation (last year when we were married a smaller-scale catastrophic move happened that we wanted to learn from).
We moved on Sunday; we moved on Monday; we moved on Tuesday; we skipped out on Wednesday; we moved on Thursday. We moved a lot. Friday rolled around, the last possible day to move. We began the day early and were surprised at how little seemed to have been accomplished. After a brief argument over how to store things in the storage space we were back on task and running hard towards the finish line of 8 p.m. I suppose this would be a good time to explain that at 8 p.m. our new landlords (our building was in April by our landlord’s rival company) would be inspecting the apartment, locking it and throwing away any possessions that were still inside.
Yes, that does sound ridiculous. No, I don’t know why they take such a “dickish” stance on that.
I arranged for a friend’s truck to be borrowed and our good friend Marcus dropped by to loan us his back. Did I mention he’s getting married in 7 days? Anyways, Marcus and I loaded my bed and various other large things into this truck and tried our hardest to deliver them in a timely manner.
This would be a good time to describe the truck I borrowed. It was a large, 8-cylinder beast of a truck (with probably only 3 cylinders actually working) with a rusted-out floor and lots of non-working parts (seat-belts for one). It’s name was Art, and it was a bit painful to drive. The engine wouldn’t seemingly rev down enough to shift back into first gear at times, so killing the engine was the only way to shift back into first gear after, say, reversing. Needless to say, I thought it adventuresome.
Due to the slow-pace of Art we didn’t return to the apartment for nearly 2 hours after leaving. This put us at 7:30 p.m. Marcus’ fiancée Karen was called in, and she called pretty much all of our friends she could think of. Within the span of 10 minutes we had six or seven extra pairs of hands packing and moving for us. It was truly a God-send.
Eight p.m. rolls around and everyone is still constantly moving around. Since no-one car pooled, every car we could find was packed to the gills. The landlord was nowhere to be found for an exit-interview. Again, thank God for that. The Red Bull™ I drank at 7:45 was not the best call. The landlord arrives nearly an hour after they’re supposed to.
I tell everyone to stop what they’re doing and just grab stuff and put it in the hallway. Soon my hallway was littered with frozen food items, unpacked cleaning supplies, and any other assorted miscellany. My wife is now unpacking across town and the landlord needs her key. A cell-phone call got her back before the landlord leaves. Fortunately, the inspection goes well and we’re nearly finished for the night.
My good friends and I were in the clear and a few trips to the storage unit later I was preparing to shower (shout-out to Frank Kerous) and wondering why I’m not just crying like a baby given the stress of the day.
I cannot begin to thank my friends enough for helping us in this move. Marcus, Karen, Susie, Chris, Kristi, and Molly: you were all wonderful. You really stepped up and helped us when we were incredibly stressed and erratic. Jerry, I know you would have helped more if you could walk and I thank you for the truck.
