I've never moved before.
That's kinda a lie. The last time I had to move was about 17 years ago, at which time I was responsible solely for making sure I had my teddy bear and a colouring book. Moving at 25, I discovered, is a lot harder when you have to make sure you have your teddy bear, a colouring book, and absolutely everything else you've ever owned ever.
The packing was pretty hellish. We thought we'd go the "easy" route (oh, the hilarity in thinking that any of this would be easy) and get one of those you-pack-it-we-move-it places. The delivery of the trailer went smoothly enough, but I should've know that the simplicity of the act was going to end there. This is, after all, me we're talking about here.
Despite my best efforts to get the physical packing done in a timely and coordinated fashion, when the day itself arrived, we were running around like a pair of recently beheaded poultry. See, being Virgoan, I have this burning desire for things to be organized to a degree, and that's just not very easy to do when you have 17 years worth of crap that's been stuffed into the various nooks and crannies of a relatively small house. And that's just my crap; Mike's had 8 years to fill whatever tiny spaces I'd left. Essentially, all I'd managed to do in the months before The Big Day was make even more of a mess than we'd had to start with, and render it impossible to sort anything else out.
I was a wreck, essentially. For weeks there had been such little space in our house that I relished the idea of a five-day road trip, just so I could have a bit of room to move around. My spine itched, I was so cramped and uncomfortable in the house. So in more ways than one, the delivery of the truck was a huge relief.
That was, of course, until we actually got started.
Problem 1: No ramp.
Problem 2: Heat.
Problem 3: Space
The truck arrived at 10am. By 6pm, we still hadn't finished. Between us, I think Dork Boy and I had guzzled ten gallons of water (and hadn't taken a single bathroom break, to give you an idea of how much of our body's most precious resource we were sweating away). And did I mention all the stuff we had to leave behind? Yes, I know I did, but let me bitch about that once more:
We left so much of our stuff behind, and I'm not at all pleased about it.
<sigh> The bitterness won't fade for some time, I'm afraid.
Around 10pm, after some muchly needed showering, we passed out.
It took two hours to finish packing the truck, and then we fought with the bulkhead for an hour or so. Somehow, we managed to spend two or three entire hours packing the car.
I thought that the physical labour part would be the hardest, but I hadn't yet anticipated my mother.
She surprised the hell out of both of us by being so upset, she kept crying. I can count the number of times I've seen my mother cry on one hand. I lack the vocabulary to express how unsettling this was. My father left years and years ago, so I was, essentially, leaving her on her own. The guilt was almost too much to bear. Even now, I hate the fact that I had to drive off and leave her there, but I've just resolved to pitch the hell out of Oregon when she comes to visit... After all, she hates Louisiana at least as much as I do.
Anyway, the actual leaving itself took about an hour. I'd wanted to be on the road by noon.
Actual time: 3pm.
The song on the radio: "Don't Come Around Here No More" by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.
I love it when the radio gets all karmic.
I actually went with this company under the stipulation that they would have a ramp for us to use. I paid more with this company instead of going with my first choice because of the bloody ramp. I'm not a professional mover, it seemed like getting a couch onto a trailer five and a half feet off the ground would be assisted greatly by the presense of a ramp, y'know? But oh no, no ramp for me. "You don't really need it unless you're moving a refrigerator or something," the driver told us. Well, thanks for asking if we had a fridge before not bringing one.
Anybody here ever been to south Louisiana in July? For those of you who have never had the pleasure of joining this extravaganza of suffering, indulge me in an experiment. Go digging in your closet and find the warmest outfit that you own. Put it on. Now get your second warmest outfit, and put that on over the first. Don't forget that winter coat! Now go preheat your oven to 425 degrees and when it's good and ready, climb inside. Make sure to close the door behind you. Feel that? That's a cool day in south Louisiana in July.
When we signed the contract for this truck, we'd agreed to a set amount of space on the trailer. In my naiveté, I thought that would be more than enough room. By the time we were done packing it, we were 4 feet over and looking at $800 more in moving expenses... And that was with leaving approximately half our crap behind. Happy? Oh no. Able to do anything about it? Not in the least.
