I’m not ashamed to say that I feel like a punching bag today. The majority of my body aches in a way that it hasn’t in a long time. I know this is a sign of the fact that I have really let myself get giant, fat, soft and lazy, but this morning, it feels like a badge of accomplishment. In the course of 2 days, I filled a 14′ foot Uhaul truck, twice, with the largest and heaviest stuff in my house, then unfilled it miles away. I didn’t do it alone by any means, and probably would have died a horrible death if it wasn’t for my Dad’s knowledge of how you should put stuff in a truck and Yeti Detective’s knowledge of how to lift heavy things using Kung Fu.
I’m not kidding on that last part, either, you can literally kung fu anything into a box truck. You guys should all try that.
Of course, it wasn’t enough to force my father and best friend into back-breaking labor… no, that wouldn’t ever be good enough for a sadistic man-child like me. I forced them into backbreaking labor in the rain. Seriously, we spent all day Saturday carrying heavy crap up and down an aluminum ramp in a torrential downpour only slightly less destructive than a tornado.
Trust me, here in the Midwest we compare our weather to tornadoes a lot. We’re pretty good at it.
I don’t think you’ve ever really lived until you’ve carried a solid cherry-wood desk weighing in at somewhere between 500 and infinity pounds up an aluminum plank slick with rain and mud while 50 mile-per-hour winds whip around you and a nine-year-old chases a 4-year-old under you feet by throwing crab apples at him.
Man… that was a run on sentence, but it was a run on kind of weekend.
The Caveat About Free Desks
Free Desks come with a price. This is especially true when the free desk is a mammoth cherry-wood super monster that your parents are giving you.
The price you pay when your parents give you stuff is always, always, steeper than you would expect, and always added after the transaction.
For me, once we had risked our life and limb to haul the zillion-pound desk across the county, my father let me know the price I was paying for having an awesome desk.
“Now that we gave you this desk, I expect a novel to be written at it.”
Boom, just like that this awesome executive desk where I was totally planning on pretending I was a rich and powerful man was suddenly a place of work.
“I don’t write novels.” That was my first reply, my subtle implication being that I’ve grown quite comfortable with my life as an essayist and blogger. I didn’t want to get into the “I’ve tried to write novels and I suck giant monkey crotch at it, so I’m just going to run away and hide like a frightened chimpanzee being hunted by the terminator.” I mean, come on, obviously Dave Berry’s okay with being an awesome humor and essayist.
What, Dave Berry has written multiple novels? Crap…
Not that it mattered, my dad seemed to just ignore my sudden conviction that I didn’t have to be a novelist to be a writer.
“Okay, Six novels written at that desk.”
YOU CRAZY OLD MAN!
Okay, so maybe I’m not being fair to my dad. He’s not that old, and he’s more wily than crazy. I mean, now I’m trapped. I can’t take the desk back to their place because it weighs more than the combined weight of every man I’ve ever met, and I can’t not write a novel at it or my dad will be disappointed in me. So I guess I have to write a novel… well, actually six novels… I just can’t see a way out of it.
I hope you’re all ready for some really horrible novels the be forced down your eye-holes with a snow shovel.
I plan to use tropes, possibly about vampires.
I probably won’t make them sparkle.
Probably.
Sore Mondays
In the end, I’m only about 60% moved or so. All my furniture lives about 30 minutes from all my clothes at the moment. I still have quite a bit of small stuff left to stuff into my little Focus and haul back and forth down 71 highway from the suburban home in Belton to what can only be described as the middle of no where. In fact, I’ve pretty much gone the opposite direction from my “Move Downtown” goal on my 30-Before-30 list. I’m okay with that, though. I think I’ll be happy living miles away from civilization when the apocalypse comes in December, and I’ll be saving a butt-load of money.
I intend to buy a pony… or you know… something more practical.
This morning, though, I am back in my cube-farm at work, joints cracking and muscles squeaking. I feel both completely behind and heavily accomplished. I’ve got a lot of work to do in the next few days, and that doesn’t even include unpacking.
When it’s all finished, and everything moved and restored its new proper place, I will close the doors to my little basement apartment and sleep for a few days…
But that’s still weeks off. In the meantime, I will just keep trucking along and reminding myself that I probably won’t have to do this again for a very long time, and I was lucky to get a 6 year break instead of moving to a new apartment at the end of a lease like I used to… like so many people I know now do.
The next time I move, it will be into something I own.
Maybe I’ll win the Powerball and I’ll be able to move into a building with my name on it.
I like that idea.
SIDE NOTE:
I can now scratch “Rent a UHaul” off of my list of things that I have to do before I call myself an adult.