Last week our final move was completed. We call it our final move because our plan is not to move until, as Karen puts it, we're transferred to Shady Acres. That may well be the case, but if it weren't, this move would strongly argue in favor of it being our last move.
We closed on the house on June 19. Because the seller was a World War II widow who needed the help of her adult children to move, we agreed that she could have some time to get out of the house. Originally, this was going to be two weeks, but she decided for financial reasons to scoot after only three days. Once we got the keys, we began bringing over carloads of our belongings to our new residence, which was only about five miles away from our then current lodging.
Because we'd had the foresight to not unpack everything and leave the boxes in the garage, we didn't have as much packing to do as we had the year before. Of course, we couldn't predict that we'd go through a winter with record snowfall, making getting into our cars dreary at best and unsafe at worst, but we had to do it. We survived the winter and had a lot of things ready to move, so once the keys were in our hands, that's what we proceeded to do.
One of the first tasks in the new house was to replace the toilet in the master bathroom. Given my previous experience in toilet replacement, one can only surmise the joy that spread through my being when I became aware of the upcoming task. One might also think that the previous experience would have put me a leg up on this replacement, but one would be wrong. O', I knew well how to replace the toilet. I knew which tools I needed, what went where when and how to test it. But the problem this time stemmed from the manufacturer, Kohler, who has an otherwise excellent reputation for its products. Unfortunately, Kohler didn't exactly provide all the materials needed in its box for me to finish the job, which necessitated three visits to the local Home Depot that sold us the toilet to get the replacement parts for the replacement toilet. Suffice it to say Home Depot got tired of seeing me, but they were great.
The upshot is that between this replacement and the one back in Illinois, I lost a week of my life replacing toilets.
Every day we would load up our cars with something and cart it over to the new house. Beside the seemingly endless stream of boxes that needed moved, we had myriad details to arrange, including the shutting off and turning on of utilities at the respective residences, getting registered to vote, transferring the address with the bank, getting our mail forwarded, etc. While this was going on, Karen and I were still working full time (she more than I), trying to arrange for a lawn service to mow what was quickly becoming a hay field with he cool weather and too attentive rain showers and take care of various projects that required our attention in the new house.
I've detailed in an earlier post the fight to get wallpaper stripped in the master bedroom, so I won't belabor the point here. But that effort hit a snag when, the week before our anticipated move date -- the date on which movers came to cart off the furniture that we couldn't move ourselves -- Karen was admitted to the hospital. In fact, she'd gone to the ER the week before, only to have the witch doctor there prescribe medicine that made her illness worse. Nothing points to the futility of modern medicine more than the process of what I've deemed medical whack-a-mole: Eliminating various potential illnesses took four days, at the end of which the doctors were no closer to a decision on what ailed Karen. So Karen lost four days in the hospital essentially to be hydrated. In the meantime, I was only able to bring carloads of belongings to the house and scrape an errant strip of wallpaper here or there. This could have seriously derailed our move.
Karen, ever the trooper, got back into the fray the next day. We stripped the wallpaper, spackled, cleaned and sanded the walls furiously, like teenagers trying to hide all the booze and porn before the parents returned from a long weekend away. Two days before our scheduled move we (read: Karen) were able to put paint on the the walls to allow it sufficient time to dry before our move.
At this point, one would think that a well-deserved sigh of relief was in order.
One would be wrong, of course.
The day before our move I got calls from the movers confirming our date and from Budget confirming what I thought was to be a sixteen-foot truck. I was told that the sixteen foot was unavailable and that I could take the ten foot truck that was there -- take it or leave it. That this message was delivered insouciantly by the local Budget agent as he sat in the garage nonchalantly smoking only served to stoke my ire. We returned to the apartment to get more things moved and I went on a jihad with Budget, calling the corporate offices and asking if Budget had franchises that were being run by the mob. Within twenty minutes I got a call from corporate's distribution office telling me that a sixteen-footer was on its way to our local Budget office. Almost laughably I got a call shortly thereafter from Mr. Take-It-Or-Leave-It happily telling me that a sixteen-footer had been found and would be at his office shortly. Sometimes, throwing people under the bus does wonders for their attitudes.
The next day dawned and, as planned, Karen drove me to pick up the truck and then went back to house to wrangle the boys into a room where they wouldn't interfere with the move. I awaited the movers at the apartment and loaded up what furniture I could move myself. Shortly thereafter the movers arrived. Although I'm no giant myself, I'm a good-sized 6'2" tall. Not one of these movers crested six feet. What's more, one of them looked like the product of a mating of Marilyn Manson with an anorexic. Needless to say, my confidence in getting this done was diminishing.
I quickly explained what the layout of the new house was so we could pack the truck accordingly and stepped aside. It became readily apparent that I would need to be more involved given Manson's Mini-Me's inability to carry more than a cushion capably. A couple of times I thought he'd be crushed by the furniture he was struggling to carry. The results of his incompetence were later found all over the apartment's walls that I would have to spackle. The four movers dithered so many times over how to put the furniture in the truck that we ended up having to make two runs.
When we arrived at the house, I hustled them along to cut down on the amount of time we'd need to unload the truck. A curious game ensued whereby the four movers tried to guess my profession. Hilariously, one of the first things they guessed was that I was an electrician. It took them over an hour to get it right. In the meantime, the clock continued to run.
So did the dings, scratches and dents in our furniture and walls. After we had all our belongings in the house, we surveyed the damage and found a number of things injured by the movers. Mini-Me's participation had hurt badly.
Karen and I began to square things away after they left only to find a message on her phone from her doctors telling her she needed to go back to the hospital the next day for yet another test, the result of which would do nothing to provide any clarity on her condition. That excursion cost us another three hours of time that we needed to clean up the old apartment so we could get our deposit back.
That afternoon and the following Saturday we we slaved away at removing what few belongings were in the apartement and cleaning everything to Karen's exacting standards. Given that she'd spent four days in the hospital the week before, it's little wonder the apartment was almost antiseptic by the time we turned the keys in this past Tuesday. At long last, our time in the apartment hard against the expressway.
We'd traded the noise and congestion of a utilitarian apartment for the relative tranquility of a somewhat rural house with more yardwork and less square footage than the apartment. It's a toss-up as to whether the boys or Karen and I are happier in the new house. We brought the boys to the house one day during the Great Wallpaper Strip and when we told them to come to the car to go back to the apartment, neither of them would budge.
Our move is now complete. No longer are we denizens of a town where people are rude and entitled. We live with plenty of space around us, no interference from anyone and majestic views. Our dining area overlooks a bucolic scene of a large tree beside a pond. Blue spruce ring the property in the front, with a huge mutli-branched maple that shades the house from the sun in the afternoons. The private dirt road gives off a distinct rumble when cars careen down it, and the wheat field across it will be harvested soon. Wildlife makes an appearance now and then, whether it be deer, raccoons or the chickens next door. So far, the only neighbors we've met are Pepper and Jack, the lab retrievers from one of our as-yet nameless neighbors. Last night there was a breakthrough of sorts as the fellow next door -- Larry, Darryl or Darryl; we can't determine which -- nodded at us with a broad smile as he drove his lawn mower around his lot.
This, now is home. It took three long, arduous years, and at times we wondered if it would happen. Yet it did, and we couldn't be happier.
Well, I could. I still have to replace one of the toilets in the house.
There go another three days of my life.
(c) 2014 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles
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