Paying Two Rents, Got Nowhere to Sleep

Well, we did it, We moved. Sort of. Mostly. Long story. Now where is the perfect place to tell a long story….? Hmmmmmm……

We were going to move in July, but that’s when they found the asbestos. We changed our moving date to the end of July, which was when they found the other asbestos. Now we have a signed lease that says August 6. Of course that does us no good when the electrician does not properly pull permits. So we moved, but we aren’t technically allowed to live there, in the legal sense. All of our stuff is at the new place, and two miles down the road is our empty apartment, where we now live until Wednesday. Probably Wednesday. Unless they find more asbestos.

I went over to my sister’s place on Friday night to start the moving process. Half of our stuff has been sitting in her basement ever since we moved from Baltimore, and it was finally time to retrieve it. Hey, it’s only been six years! So we loaded up the truck with everything that had been in storage, and on Saturday morning we began the 2-hour drive over to the new house. It actually took slightly longer than two hours because apparently driving down the interstate with a giant tarp on the back of your truck can cause lift-off, so we had to keep stopping to re-tie, re-tape, and re-tinker.

My brother-in-law Mr. Woop was the hero of the day, as he is on all moving days, bringing his huge strength, knowledge, and truck to bear for us. We got that first load unloaded with the help of our church sexton, Chesty Jillians. Chesty and Mr. Woop made quick work of that truck full of stuff, but now it was time to go to the apartment and begin the real fun times.

Since our apartment is on the 2nd and 3rd floors of the building, every thing we brought out to the truck had to go down at least one flight of narrow stairs. My other brother-in-law, Raisin Chipotle, was there to help us this time, which was lucky for us because Chesty had gone home by that time. Raisin, Mr. Woop, and I carted things down the stairs, things like heavy hide-a-bed sofas and dressers and whatnot, until the truck was almost full. We couldn’t quite fill it, because we needed to head over to our storage unit to get some other large and heavy items. This was going to be a long day. Thank goodness my friend Feve Stable arrived with his son Fathom or we never could have gotten it all done.

After the 2nd load had been deposited in one of the four rooms available to us in the new house (the others were being painted, or else needed re-wiring, or were full of appliances), it was time to break for lunch. We needed a rest, because we still had to tackle the piano. The piano was heavy, but we helped a bit by taking it completely apart by accident. This lightened the load considerably, so that when Feve, Fathom, Mr. Woop, and I slid it gently down the stairs, very few of us were crushed to death.

Our third load consisted mainly of the biggest items from the apartment, and then the majority of what was in our storage unit. My mother had the brilliant idea of hiring three local co-op boys, including local Olympic hero Bullet Bottger, to help move boxes for the price of ice cream. We were in a bit of a rush, since Feve and Fathom had to head out, so we managed to get that done with astonishing speed and said goodbye to our new best friends and turned around, ready to complete the dang move.

Load #4 was the “whatever is left” load, and we finished the day with a pizza party on the porch of the parsonage. Now all of our stuff is at the new place, but we can’t sleep there because the inspection failed due to the lack of paperwork. So we have our old place still for another few days, it just has no beds, or silverware, or shoes, or anything else useful. They are telling us Wednesday now. Hopefully in another two days we will actually be in the new house, unpacking everything from the rooms where we have stacked it all. Until then, we will be here at the co-cop, sleeping on bare floors, and visiting our stuff in between when we can.