Momma D's Blog: One Girl, One Old Lady and a Cube

Moving. Yes. How I love to help my children move across the country. The only good thing I can say is that Alaska Girl and Computer Boy have never requested our help moving. Yet.

Swim Girl had done her homework and reserved one of those pod-like cubes. I think that hers was called U Pack. She had done as much packing as was possible, but you know how it goes. There was still a lot to do.

Here is how this works. You reserve the cube. They deliver it on the day requested. You pack it. You provide the ginormous lock and lock it up. You call them. They pick it up. They call you to let you know when it will be delivered to the new place. They drop it off. You unpack it. You call them. They pick it up. Easy.

How cute. Look at the little cube. Note how close the little cube is to the curb. This will factor prominently into my story.

We haven't even started and she looks cranky.

We have to do what?

It is a great idea and all very easy except for one little thing. You pack it. Now, imagine two women; one with a new knee, bad back, sore arms from the face plant in NYC and just generally old parts, doing this. Kinda makes you laugh out loud doesn't it?

Luckily for us, there weren't too many heavy things to move. Mattress, box springs, two dressers with glass fronts (yikes), couch, table. The rest was boxes. Swim Girl lived on the lower level and I was able to just put the boxes on the ground off of the patio. Cool. I am not sure I would yet be recovered if she had lived on the 3rd floor.

She had mapped out how things would fit. After two trips to various stores to gather the correct supplies, we were ready to load. Uh huh. The mailman had to help us with one of the freakin' dressers. Jeez.

Now, fast forward to around 9:30 pm. It is dark and we are still finishing up with the last item: the box spring. We wrap it up in bubble wrap and a big plastic bag. Unfortunately, this makes it so slick the girls (her wonderful roommate, Teacher Lady, helped) couldn't grab it. Luckily they thought of grabbing a couple of beach towels and they slipped those under each end. Voila. Movement. Until we get to the stairs.

Bear in mind that by this time I am hurting so badly that I am not sure I will be able to walk the next day. Therefore, I am basically useless. I did hold the flashlight. The girls managed to get the box spring up the one flight of stairs, out the door and up the outside steps to the sidewalk. They walked it up to the cube. Then we attempted to put it on top of all of the rest of the stuff. It should have worked. I mean, we used a tape measure and everything. What we didn't realize was that the cube was next to the end curb of the parking lot. We couldn't swing that door open far enough to get the full width of the unit. Very heavy sigh.

Picture the three of us outside, in the dark, trying to lift this thing up and onto the top of everything else. I held the flashlight again. Many attempts later, we just decided to stick it in the very front of the rest of the stuff, shut the door and hope that the box spring wouldn't break into pieces.

(I really wanted to take pics of this part of the move, but I was afraid that Swim Girl and Teacher Lady would throw things at me. Heavy, hurtful things. There are no pictures.)

Because I am brilliant, we had a nice, comfy hotel room waiting for us at the Hampton Inn. We got there around 10:45. We had to get up at 5:15 because Swim Girl was still working and everyone knows that swimmers love early mornings. I had to take her so that I could get back to the apartment and start cleaning and organizing the last of the things. I get more mommy points here.

We left her place sometime after 4pm, drove 6 hours with a drugged cat and stayed somewhere in Kentucky, I think. Or maybe it was West Virginia. I know that we took the more mountainous route because we wanted to 'see' the sights. Hard to do that in the dark. Harder still to drive in the rain while they are working on the highway the whole freakin' time that you are driving in the dark. Did I mention that this is the last time I help her do this? At least until the next time that she moves anyway.