Moving

This was the weekend of the Big Move.

For the first time in 8 years, a move not across the country, but only across town. A move from the furthest suburban sprawl at the edge of town to the original-settlement Victorian neighborhood which lies between campus and downtown. We’d finally decided to stop thinking of being here as a temporary thing, presaging a return to NYC or a move to another city (SF? Austin?), and instead take advantage of the things about Lawrence that we love. The best way to do that was to live within walking distance of those things, in the heart of it.

But… Oi. The Move.

As I said on Saturday, when somebody asked me how it was going:

What’s the stage AFTER “clusterfuck?”

To quote Iniqo Montoya (no, not THE quote, the other one): “There is too much. I will sum up.” The clusterfucking was as follows:

• We ran out of boxes, so a bunch of stuff was still unboxed on Saturday, the day we’d been blessed with a bunch of friend’s help, and the day we had a U-Haul truck rental. We’d been bringing boxes to the new place, unpacking them, and bringing the empties back to the old place to be re-filled. This, obviously, had slowed us down. OK, not a problem. Executive Decision: We’d use the truck (and the friends) to only move those things which most needed those implements: Namely, the furniture and appliances. We’d get the rest ourselves once we’d boxed them up (since we gave ourselves to the end of the month to finish).
• Before people arrived, Dotta Numba Two and I are upstairs, packing. I hear what sounds like the washing machine downstairs going into a wash cycle. Odd, I thought, but maybe Laura had decided to wash something. A few minutes later, we headed downstairs to get more boxes — only to hear muffled cries of “HELP!!” coming from behind the closed utility room door, with water flowing out from under it.

  Here’s what happened: Laura was unhooking the washer and drier for moving. She turned off the hot and cold taps, and removed the hot water line — no problem. She removed the cold water line, and was rewarded with a geyser of freezing cold water jetting into the room. No matter which way she turned the tap, it wouldn’t shut off. She had been trying to re-attach the line (an impossible task, given the force of the water), and calling for help, as water gushed into the room — and we’d only just now heard her. After a bit, the water main was found (it wasn’t in the usual spot… OF COURSE), and the water turned off to the whole house. But by that point, the utility room, kitchen, and front room of the place had about 2-3 inches of water on the floor.

  As you might imagine, this little set-back delayed us somewhat.

• Once we finally got that taken care of, and at least partially cleaned up, we loaded. Of course, as we delivered the first truckload to the new place, the skies opened up. Thunderstorm. Pretty much for the rest of the day. We got one more truckload done (while we still had help), and I decided to call U-Haul and extend our truck rental for another day, because there was no way we’d finish.
• On the second truckload of the day, a comedy of errors led to the back door of the truck not being latched properly, which resulted in our bed frame falling out onto the street — thankfully not causing an accident, or destroying the frame, but (due to another comedy of errors), nobody realizing it until almost an hour later.

We thanked our friends, fed them and sent them on their way. On Sunday, it was 73 and sunny (of course), and two of our friends returned to offer assistance for the second day (thereby forever earning their place as Saints in my estimation). We got the rest of the furniture and good chunk of the other stuff too.

Now, we’re about 85-90% moved. There’s still stuff at the old place, and we’ll spend the next few evenings over there, grabbing the remaining things, cleaning up each room as we do. At this point, we’re in the organizational stage of things. Laura’s turf. I’m mostly lift-and-carry, usually at the off-loading stage, in bulk. GRRAAAAH. HULK STRONG.

…and then we get to spend the month of April putting things away, and generally nesting. And maybe sleeping. Sleeping would be good.