Musings
an Online Journal of Sorts

By Alyce Wilson

Our new living room, in transition

Saturday was the big moving day, and it started off with frustration.

Now, I've rented vehicles before from U-Haul. I rented a truck in about 1995 to move between apartments in State College, and I rented a trailer when I moved from Central Pennsylvania to Philadelphia in early 2001.

But I hadn't rented any post-9/11 and had no idea what was in store for me.

The Gryphon and I had our friend, The Dormouse, pick us up at 20 of 7 and drive us to the U-Haul center, where we were supposed to be picking up the truck. First of all, they didn't open their doors until 10 after, and when they did it appeared they had told everyone in the world to be there at 7 and then had only one person checking them in.

Even so, it seemed to be taking an inordinate amount of time to check in each person. I had no idea why until it was our turn. By that point, we had already overshot the time we'd told people to be at The Gryphon's place to help move. So we called one friend, The Cousin, on her cell phone and let her know. And we asked our friend, The Dormouse, to drive there and let people know what was happening. The Gryphon stayed with me, because he had to help me figure out how to get around the low railroad passes near his apartment.

I showed my paperwork, showed my driver's license, presented my credit card and figured I was done. But I wasn't, not by a long shot. The woman behind the counter needed a land line telephone number to use as a contact and, I suppose, to confirm who I was. And, as The Cheshire Cat said yesterday, "Y0u can get a warrant for a land line phone number." But I hadn't planned for this, and most of our friends were already at the new place, waiting for us to arrive.

She said she could just call my old number, if the outgoing message on the answering machine had my name on it. But I'd never changed it from the default message, figuring it was safer for a single woman living alone.

I gave her a couple local numbers of friends but there was no answer. I had her call my mom, my sister and my brother, with no luck. My Dad was in town, and would have answered, but he was using his cell phone. So I pulled out my address book and started going through it, giving her numbers to try.

Finally, my College Roommate answered. She, of course, had no idea what was going on, especially since they wouldn't let her talk to me, but tentatively agreed to be the contact. A couple minutes later, she called back, just to make certain they were who they said. She hadn't even known I was moving, because I hadn't told her, knowing she's nearing her due date for her pregnancy and wouldn't be able to help with the move.

Now that they had their land line number, they had me sign a couple things, took my thumbprint (!) and finally gave me the keys.

As we were pulling out of the parking lot, I thought there was something wrong with the truck. It didn't even seem like it was in gear, it was going so slowly. We pulled over in an empty parking lot and did a quick evaluation of it. We decided it was simply because it was a diesel truck, and that's how they function.

We had to put gas in right away, because it was almost on empty when they gave it to us! They'd told us we didn't have to put much in for our local move, but to be safe, we put a quarter of a tank in. While The Gryphon pumped the gas, I called my College Roommate to apologize for the U-Haul weirdness.

"Oh, so you found a place?" she said. It turns out that the reason she'd even been awake at 7:30 to answer the phone was that she was having contractions! Bet she had a long day, too.

Our top speed was about 25 miles an hour unless we had a good long stretch to build up speed. So we didn't get to The Gryphon's place until about 8:30, which was an hour after we'd told people to be there.

They were standing around The Cousin's truck, talking, and didn't seem particularly put out by the inconvenience. When I told them what happened — "And then they took my thumbprint!" — The White Rabbit joked, "There, there, my Muslim sister. The Man does it to us all."

At least we'd learned our lesson. In the future, if we need to rent a truck, we shouldn't plan on starting until at least an hour to an hour and a half after the scheduled time to pick it up.

Once we got to The Gryphon's place, everything fell into place. He'd set everything that needed to be moved in his front room, so people broke into teams and started moving furniture. I was in good spirits, considering I'd had very little sleep the night before, getting some things done around my place to prepare for the move.

I carried boxes out to a little hand truck and took them to The Cousin's truck for loading, all the time joking with people and talking like Grr from Invader Zim . The Cheshire Cat said, at one point, "Is somebody being silly?" I, of course, immediately denied it.

One of the problems at The Gryphon's place was a network of vines all over the ground right outside his sliding glass doors. They would grab at your feet as you walked, but fortunately, nobody tripped or got hurt.

We initially had planned on loading up his place and then driving to my place to load mine. But he had enough furniture to fill up the truck on his own, so the new plan was to unload his stuff at the new place and then go back for mine.

Fortunately, I had mentioned to our next door neighbor at the new place that we were moving Saturday, so he'd parked his Mustang convertible on the other side of the street, leaving us a nice open area to park the moving van.

But it really didn't take us terribly long to get his furniture into the place. There was some initial confusion about where things left, until The Gryphon and I stayed inside and directed people where things should go.

After a short break, everybody was ready to go again. In fact, The Cheshire Cat said, "Let's go now before we lose the will to move."

We sent them back to my old place. The Gryphon and I got in the moving van and were driving there when we were spotted by the assistant for the plumber who is converting the claw-foot tub in our bathroom to have a shower mechanism. He wanted to know when they could get in to begin the work they were doing, so I sent The Gryphon back with him to the apartment to let them in.

I didn't expect to, but I beat the rest of the group to my old place. As I was pulling up to the curb, I saw a white guy in a suit, carrying a briefcase, on my porch. He looked like somebody official and was looking at the door expectantly, as if he'd just knocked on it. Of course, the brain always tries to make things fit together, so immediately I wondered if it had something to do with the move. Maybe the U-Haul people were checking up on me?

Then I noticed there was also a white woman with him, also wearing a suit and carrying a briefcase. As I walked up to the porch, she tried to hand me an "Awake" magazine. Seventh Day Adventists.

"I can see you're busy today, but..."

Now, usually, I'm more polite, but today I simply said, "I'm not interested. Sorry." I've had a plague of Seventh Day Adventists coming to my house, but every other time they've been African-American, which is what threw me off.

After I'd sent them away, a guy pulled up in a van to the place next door, in front of which I'd parked the truck. He was wearing a ragged T-shirt and apparently waiting for someone. Eventually, I overheard him talking to someone and figured out he was there to fix a broken sewer pipe.

Meanwhile, I was wondering where my friends were, because they should have been me there. I called The Gryphon to see if he had The Cousin's cell phone number, but when he called it, it rang in the purse she'd left behind at the new place.

Eventually, they showed up and I learned they'd taken a wrong term out of the new place. Because we'd been locked into a certain idea of how the move would go, we'd only provided directions from The Gryphon's place to my place to the new place. We hadn't provided directions from The Gryphon's place to the new place or to my place from the new place. Yet another lesson for next time.

Everyone was finally there, but before we could get going, the guy from the borough wanted me to move the truck off the curb, which he was afraid would get broken by us loading the truck. He said he was there to fix a pipe that a previous person had broken with a moving truck. Of course, I think it was the workers who had been doing work on that place for half a year, parking big pickup trucks full of stuff out front on the lawn almost every day.

Finally, we were going, and I gave directions to people as to what had to go. Most of the furniture was extremely light, and initially I thought that moving my stuff would be a welcome break to moving The Gryphon's furniture. But what I didn't count on was how heavy my filing cabinet was, even though it was empty. According to The Martial Artist, it was heavier than the sun.

The reason I didn't know how heavy it was is because I bought it used from a guy who had delivered it himself with a hand truck and a couple friends. The filing cabinet is the same size that you find in offices, and the drawers were not removable. So it was much heavier than it had any right to be.

When the original owner sold it to me, they got it just inside the front door and told me I was on my own. But I had carpet, so once I'd figured out where to put it, I slid it along the carpet myself, grunting and groaning, and then tilted it up and let it crash down in place.

As they struggled and sweated and groaned, I feared one of them would pop a knee or break a finger. I really began to regret having them move it, but there really wasn't any choice.

I really had to rethink my idea about where it would go. Initially, it was supposed to go in my office upstairs. But then I realized there would be no way to get it there. We'd already found it impossible to get The Gryphon's Queen size box spring upstairs and had to settle for just the mattress, leaving the box spring on the porch until we can sell it to a used furniture store or something.

So I knew the filing cabinet wouldn't go upstairs, and it had to go downstairs. I'd had people leave a space for it just inside the door, in part because the rest of the apartment was already crowded with The Gryphon's furniture.

With a lot more effort, and a lot more sweat, they got the filing cabinet in, inched it into place, and removed the hand truck. "Welcome to your new home," we all said. There's simply no way it will move from that spot.

Honestly, though, if it has to be downstairs, that's not a bad place for it. It's right at the bottom of the stairs, so it will be easy for me to access when needed. Plus, I'll get extra exercise going up and down the stairs.

I'd warned everybody to use the bathroom at my old place before returning to the new one, because I didn't know how long the plumbers would be there. What I didn't count on was that they would have their tools spread out all over the available floor space upstairs as they put together the new pipe mechanism.

So then we had to change our plan, and some of my stuff, which was supposed to go upstairs in places I'd left for it, now had to be jammed either downstairs or on the front porch. By the time we'd finished this process, I was getting touchy and snapped at The Gryphon a bit. He wanted to put things as close as possible to where they were going, and I tried to explain to him that currently wasn't possible.

I really felt bad about getting irritable. This touchiness had begun to be clear when we paused for a lunch break before unloading my stuff off the truck. I'd had everybody bring the food back from the new place and set it on the table. They had all gathered around me, so I requested they please step back and let me arrange everything first. I'm afraid that the stress was getting to me and my voice was a little brusque.

I'd been prepared for the normal stresses of moving but not for the unusually convoluted post-9/11 rental process or for the added inconvenience of having plumbers spread out all over the second floor.

Despite it all, everybody seemed to remain in relatively good spirits. That's one thing about this group; they tend to see the humor in a situation and make each other laugh. We were fortunate that we had The Cheshire Cat there, too, who has a lot of experience in moving heavy objects because of prior work experiences. He could advise us on the proper way to move things without hurting ourselves or damaging the property or the objects.

After the last stuff was removed from the truck, I asked if someone could help me return it. The White Rabbit volunteered, because he wanted me to run him back afterwards to his car at The Gryphon's place, which would give him more freedom for leaving later. I joked, "I thought you were just coming along to talk with me more."

He said, "Uh, yes, that's it."

We drove back to my old place, and he followed me in my car to the rental facility. On the way there, he noticed the left turn signal was burned out, which would explain why it was blinking faster than normal inside the cab.

I told them about it when I turned it in, but something tells me they sent it right out again anyway.

The truck was more expensive than I'd expected. You used to put a deposit down and have it refunded when you returned it. But this price, I thought, was about as high as if it included a nonrefundable deposit.

As soon as I got in my car, with normal acceleration and steering, I was thrilled. Driving to The Gryphon's place, I lamented to The White Rabbit that I felt bad about getting irritated earlier. I told him that I get stressed out over moves and don't always react to it well. I'm aware of this problem, but even though I thought I'd prepared ahead of time by moving a lot of my personal stuff on my own, the unanticipated problems build up into a big headache that spilled over into irritation.

But everyone seemed to understand. By the time The White Rabbit and I returned, everyone was enjoying the microbrewed beer we'd bought, three different types (Scottish Ale, Springfest Lager and Stout). They were relaxing and talking, camped out on the furniture, which was shoved strangely into the room.

A few of them had left already, but we sat back and talked to those who had stayed. Of course, there was a limit to the amount of beer anyone could drink, because not only did they have to drive home but also the plumbers were still camped out in the only bathroom. They finally left, shortly before our friends did.

Then there we were, alone in the new place, exhausted but relieved. My dad was supposed to be coming over in about two hours to spend some time with us, so we shuffled enough furniture to make a somewhat decent living space. There's a lot more to do, but at least we made it a bit more livable.

My dad showed up around 5, and we showed him around. Then we all went to dinner at John Harvard's Brewhouse, the same place where we'd bought the beer. I was really starting to fade at dinner time, which was rough because I was the one driving. But I had enough energy to make it back.

We stopped on the way at the pet sitter's to pick up Una, who had slept there overnight so she'd be out of the way during the move. She was happy to be home and wouldn't stop climbing on our laps and kissing our faces. She also enjoyed investigating the new place.

The Gryphon set up my TV with his VCR and DVD player, and he and Dad watched a repeat of Law & Order while I fell asleep on the couch. I did manage to give Dad a hug when he left but then lay back down and fell asleep. I could hear him saying to The Gryphon, "Boy, she's really out," but didn't have the energy to respond. At long last, the day was over.

Copyright 2005 by Alyce Wilson

Musings Index

What do you think? Share your thoughts
at Alyce's message board (left button):