Adventures in Moving

It's amazing what a little distance can do. If I would have written this post around 6:00 pm on Sunday, I would have had to censor it for bad language and evil intent toward other human beings. But after a few days (and most importantly after successfully, if a bit arduously, completing a very necessary task) I can have a sense of humor about things.

To make a *very* long story somewhat less long...

Elizabeth was moving last weekend, and I wanted to go and help her. The movers were booked for 1:30 on Saturday afternoon. Elizabeth was ready for them. They forgot about us. We called and called, and they promised and promised, and they still didn't come. Fast forward to Sunday evening: finally the owner of the company calls back and says they're not coming at all (and blames it on us for not being nice!!). At this point every moving company and U-Haul place in the city is closed, and we have approximately negative two hours to get all of Elizabeth's stuff moved by the deadline she worked out with her landlord.

This is when things started to go... right. Sort of. We call Liam, Elizabeth's Superboyfriend, in much distress, and a half hour later he and his four amazing friends are hauling furniture and boxes downstairs to the lawn. We call Joanne, Elizabeth's new roommate, and she works it out that we can borrow the U-Haul of her former roommate who's moving out today. Never mind that they didn't GET the U-Haul until 5 pm (due to more stupidity on the part of the business people) and likely won't be done with it until after midnight. At least we have a truck. And five marvelous people to help us haul furniture downstairs so that when the truck does arrive, we can load it expediently and possibly get some sleep later.

So things go well for a while -- together with the volunteers, we get all of Elizabeth's stuff down to the lawn, and move all of the little stuff to her new apartment by car. At that point I go with Old-Roommate-cum-U-Haul to help them unload (to expedite the process) and Elizabeth and Liam sit with her furniture on the lawn. And wait. In a fairly sketchy Chicago neighborhood. After dark.

Shortly after midnight, when we are finally done unloading Old Roommate, I and the borrowed U-Haul take off to go back to Elizabeth's old place to pick up the furniture. And I feel the first drops of rain.

By the time I get back up north, it's a veritable downpour, and the lawn and Elizabeth's stuff are in the process of becoming completely soaked. An angelic man comes by (at 12:30 in the morning, no less) with an enormous tarp to cover up the most important stuff, and they move some of it back inside or under an overhang... but it still gets wet. And Elizabeth, in the genius and boldness born of desperation, hires a guy off the street to help us load the truck when it finally gets there. And so, in the pouring rain, with a borrowed U-Haul and a borrowed tarp and borrowed help, we load that truck. Lester, our helper, turns out to be a godsend. We couldn't have packed or unpacked that truck alone-- Elizabeth and I are stronger than we look, but by then it was 2:30 am and we'd been moving all day and it was a *lot* of stuff.

Lester's girlfriend Shawn comes too, hauls big loads despite her asthma/emphysema, and ends up inviting us to their wedding in November.

Still with me? One more chapter in this story. So we unload the truck at the new place, and then Elizabeth and I drop off the helpers and head back to fill the truck one last time with what remains of her stuff. And... the truck won't start. The battery is completely dead. Won't even turn over. So we shake our heads in complete disbelief-- at this point the night has gone from ludicrous to absurd to completely surreal-- and head off for the nearest gas station, where we purchase jumper cables and oven cleaner (that's another story) from a bemused Indian guy and we head back to the truck to see what we can do.

"What we can do" turns out to be not much, because a.) honestly, as brilliant as we both are, neither of us has the first clue about what goes on under the hood; and b.) can you really jump a U-Haul with a Honda Civic? Here's a snippet of conversation:

"OK, the directions say hook up one cable to the battery of the car that's charged, and the other end goes in the car to be charged. But not on the negative battery terminal; it says it should be attached to the "engine."

"What part is the engine?"

"Um... I dunno... isn't all of it the engine?"

Keep in mind it's like 5:30 am by this point and we haven't slept and the truck is due back on the other side of Chicago at 7. At this point our dozenth angel of the night comes by. His name is Joe, and he drives a semi. When he's not driving a semi, he drives a Jeep Cherokee, which he hooks up to the U-Haul and lets it charge for a while. And then--miracle of all miracles--the engine starts. We kiss Joe goodbye, head off to unload the truck, and I then hightail it down Cicero hoping to beat the 7 am deadline.

I arrive at 7:10, having not forgotten to fill the gas tank. The U-Haul lady looks at her watch. She looks at the circles under my eyes and my sweat-stained shirt. She gives me a sympathetic glance and doesn't ask any questions.

And so I take a shower and go to work. And Elizabeth goes back to clean the oven.