Or: I didn’t plan this well.
(All right, this was written a while ago and I just now got around to typing it up. What can I say? I’ve been busy.)
I’ve spent the last two months moving. I was moving out of my two bedroom apartment into a dorm with three suitemates (well, for a while we thought it was going to be two, but the mysterious roomie eventually showed up. But this is about moving not roommates.)
Obvious statement: Moving sucks.
Obvious statement: Moving SUCKS.
I was fortunate to have my parents’ help, and perhaps more importantly, my dad’s truck (and muscles. The poor man.) Not to disregard my mom’s help. She’s a moving queen, and packed a shitload for me - especially in the kitchen. She also provided boxes and packing material and lots and lots of advice. Not enough to keep me from doing stupid things, but lots.
Mistake the first: Not insisting I actually knew what I was talking about.
I had rented a storage unit. Pretty much everything was packed, even the stuff I was taking to the dorms was in a vast array of boxes, bags, and other random conveyance methods (probably mistake the second - not packing it properly.) My parents were coming ‘about noon’ to help me move the furniture (read: do most of the work cuz they have most of the muscle). I had taken apart my bed, no problem and been smart enough to put all the hardware in a bag, with notes of which bolts go where, and plastic wrap it to one of the slats. However for some reason I no longer had the tool to take apart my desk. Well, no problem, my dad has every tool known to man and then some. So I call my parents and tell my mom to have my dad to bring his Allen wrenches*
“Allen?” my mom says.
“Yeah. The hexagonal ones.”
“They’re not called Allen.”
“Well whatever. The hexagonal ones, okay?”
Yes, yes they are called Allen, hexagonal wrenches are something else.
Well, so dad brought the wrong tools. Fine, no big deal, we’ll take everything else and stop at Home Depot on the way back and I’ll buy my own set of Allen keys**
So I do. And I’m smart and not-tired enough to reason, hey, the desk is from Ikea, it’s probably metric. So I make sure we (I) get a set that’s both. And, yup, it was metric.
Minor mistakes so far.***
Well, I was moving out of my apartment on the 15th and into the dorms on the 16th. I decided I could save on gas money by leaving stuff at work (with my boss’s permission), since work is in the same town as the college, rather than two towns over (about a twenty minute drive with no traffic) at my parents’. Okay, so I dump two carloads of stuff in the warehouse. Mostly, books, kitchen, bathroom, oh and
Mistake the third: Leaving computer components at work.
Yep, I had the tower and monitor at the dorms, but no mouse, keyboard or power cable. Well, okay I can survive without my computer for a while. And my mom loaned me a keyboard and mouse, so if I get really desperate I can go to my storage unit, wiggle in, cut open the plastic keeping my desk drawers shut, and dig until I find the power cord (geek sign #1 - you have spare computer components. Geek sign #2 - you have cans of compressed air. Geek sign #3 - you have computer components that computers don’t use anymore - I fail on that one, since I cleared all that out.) I don’t go get the cord, because I’m lazy (and socializing with the roomies. …and watching TV), but I could.
Mistake the fourth: Leaving all other forms of entertainment at work.
I have no books. I have no videos. I could write, but I’m lazy (and there’s chapters and chapters of that story I need to type up)
Mistake the fifth: Leaving toiletries at work.
I have to use my dirty (mildly) bathtowel. I have no shampoo. All the really important stuff is in my toiletries case. I’m not a complete moron.
Let’s see, where am I? Sunday, I guess. I’ve bought a pad for my bed, because the mattresses are rocks with cotton wrapping, driving past the storage unit in the process - and not bringing the cooler and few other things I need to put in it. I’m smart enough NOT to buy a fitted pad, because the beds are LONG twins****, which I can’t find anything for and I can’t find a Bed, Bath, and Beyond, but at least I don’t wake up Monday morning unable to move (I have no padding, the bed is supposed to provide some, dammit)
So I go to work. I work hard (for me anyway), I load up the car and come home. There’s no parking. There’s no fire-claimed flaming parking. I have to park in SH2, which I learn is called rapelot (because that’s where the alleged rapist was, except iirc that all turned out to be bullshit the girl was making up, unless I’m conflating with a different incident. In which case I apologize.) Anyway, it’s dark, it’s windy, and I’m parked a quarter mile from my dorm.*****
Scorch this. I’ll unload the car tomorrow. Shit, tomorrow’s taijitsu. Shit, I’m supposed to be at taijitsu at 4 which means I have to leave work at 4:15, which means I’d be there less than an hour (assuming class ends at the time it’s supposed to, which isn’t likely on the first day). Shit, there’s no room in my car for my taijitsu bag. Okay, fine, where’s the schedule? Right, so I’ll go Wednesday. And unload the car tomorrow. Sometime. Hopefully.
So I can’t organize the kitchen, where you can’t get to anything because the person who designed it was apparently a crack-smoking monkey, since there’s only two drawers and only one opens more than a hands-length, because the the stove is in the way, and hardly any cabinets, and half the cabinets are tiny.
Yeah, organizing that’ll be fun. Loads of it. The kind of fun you can usually only get after huffing pixie sticks and going to Disneyland with a group of ten year olds. (Not that I’ve ever done that.)
Anyway… that’s my move so far (leaving out my usual over-anxious thoughts about my roommates, who all seem like generally nice people overall).
Please tell me about your moving disasters. Entertain me dammit! I wrote this out long-hand to type up later because I still can’t use my computer because vital components are in my car in rapelot, a mile away. In the wind. And dark.
- not entirely the correct name, I know
** the correct name. Or hexagonal keys.
*** actually the second mistake - not packing properly - ended up being a pain in the ass, especially in regards to clothes, because naturally the dorm had no carts left which meant I got to make fifty MILLION trips, by myself, up and down the elevator, by myself, before I finally got a cart to move the ENTIRE BACKSEAT full of hanging clothes that were not packed in any way at all. Brill, self, absolutely brill.
**** I had already decided I wasn’t going to buy sheets I was only going to use for a year and a half. The full sheets work fine.
*^5 okay, probably less. Maybe. I suck at telling distances. But it’s a unreasonable distance to carry shit, alright? And I’ve yet to be able to park in the close lot. I’m hoping people will drop out in the next couple of weeks. That may be a hopeless hope, but, again, I’m lazy, and don’t want to walk that far all the time.