Moving Sucks (And Other Tales)

Y'all, I don't even know where to begin. You can tell I'm at a loss because I just used the word "y'all." Speechlessness leads directly to my inner Southerner.

Let's just dive right in:

My apartment switchover is complete, and we mostly survived. In fact, unless you count the fact that we had no electricity for two days, no washer/dryer still, and the hot water heater has a mind of its own, everything pretty much worked out perfectly.

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Last week was spent nailing down all of the moving related items: electricity setup, cable setup, movers setup, etc. This mostly involved me pledging piles and piles of money (that did not necessarily exist) to people who would in turn give me vague guarantees that they might give me something in return. Someday. Maybe.

(By the end of this story, I will have spent literally every cent I have in the world on this move, and then put some more on my credit card. Moving is fun!)

I got our shipping boxes from the movers on Tuesday afternoon and then spent the next 5 days using every spare moment of my life to box up our entire apartment into 20 containers or less. Considering we only have a two bedroom apartment, this should not be such an issue, right?

I realized that I was a fool, right around the time that I found that my book collection alone filled up 7 boxes. We own a lot of shit. A whole lot. And by "we" I mean "me," because Frnak's contributions to the move were two 1'X2' boxes, a bed, and a suitcase full of clothes.

A quick and dirty breakdown of my life through the things that I own:
My DVD collection? Two boxes.
Things On The Kitchen Counters? Two boxes.
Stuff in the Tiny Closet In the Living Room? Two boxes.
Things in the Kitchen Cabinets? Two boxes.

Are you sensing the theme yet? And I haven't even mentioned Things in the Bedroom, which is where the real horrors start.

The only thing that ended up saving me was the fact that I have some epically huge storage containers from college moving, each of which count as only one box per the moving guidelines.

In the end, I was only 2 boxes over the limit. The end being 12:00AM on Sunday morning, exactly 12 hours before the movers were scheduled to arrive. Also known as "When I finished the final item (boxing the last dishes while Frnak lay drunk in the living room.)"

Only, the movers decided that it would be more efficient to show up 4 hours ahead of schedule on Sunday. Meaning I was blasted out of bed at 7:45AM after about 6 hours of sleep with a phone call notice that several large burly men would be arriving within the half-hour.

Good times.

But, ignoring the legendary sleep deprivation, it all worked out very well. The movers were super efficient and had us entirely installed in the new place by noon, and I didn't once have to pick up a single box. Which is all I ever ask in life: That I never have to do any manual labor ever again.

Since moving was finished at pretty much the exact time we expected it to start, we had the entire day to get everything unpacked and arranged into a semblance of a real-live house. I was very impressed with our can-do spirit, and also my wild compulsion to get my books back onto the bookcase before I even had my bed put together.

I don't know what was up with that.

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Now I split my afternoons at home between my new two favorite pastimes in the world:

• racing around the apartment in my socks, sliding over all the fake-wood floors like I'm 8 years-old,
• and trying to settle on what color curtains and lamp shades would look best in the new living room, now that I've finally decided that it's time for my fur-and-leather curtains to go the way of the dinosaur.

It's a pretty nice living.

But it's not all immature running around and homo-decorating. As I alluded to in the beginning, there are things that are less nice:

• The washer and dryer could not be installed until we get a repairman out to the new place to get a dryer vent in working order and I find a place that can sell me a hot water hose for the washer (as I could not get the original one off the fixture in the old apartment. It will remain there forever, I suppose.) Already my clean clothes are running short. I'm half a week away from searching out nudist colony brochures. Because I'll be damned if I'm ever going to a laundromat ever again. I have grown accustomed to a certain standard of living, by God.
  
• The hot water heater has some sort of ADD, since it seems to randomly spike the shower with shots of superheated water in an otherwise nice and relaxing cleansing period. It's like playing Press Your Luck (in the shower), only instead of Whammies this time it's someone flushing a toilet while you are in there. And instead of flushing a toilet, it just happens completely at random times. (That works out, right? Follow the stream of consciousness.)
  
• TXU can go straight to hell. After I finally cancelled my service with them at the old place (because they cost a damn arm and leg each month), I got my new company all set up to start service on Wednesday. Which worked out very nicely, as my landlord had continued his service with TXU out through the end of the week. Except no, TXU cut off the power on Tuesday morning immediately after confirming the extension with the landlord. Meaning we had two fun filled days without any electricity at all. The high point of which had me sitting on our balcony wrapped in a blanket like a crazy old lady, huddled under the one working light outside (controlled by the condo association), trying to read a book while mosquitoes feasted on my all-you-can-drink blood buffet. Apparently my survival cutoff point is 36 hours without electricity. After that, I'm pretty much just fodder for the wolves. Good to know I suppose.

But yeah, power's back on and I'm back in the real world, sort of. It'll still be a while before I get into a normal rhythm again, though.

I mean, I've got a whole lot of sliding around the apartment to do.