Diary of a Low Budget Superhero

Well, we're in! Almost all the way, too -- As I sit here and update you all, my dearest friends in the world ('cuz who else still reads me?) Joe is at the old place with Marco gathering up the very last of the stuff. The Stuff. Once it's out, we're out completely. I already took care of the cleaning and the nail-hole spackling, and let me tell you, that Comm Ave apartment is in better condition now than it has been in fifty years. I mean, way high up on top of the kitchen cabinet, I found fruit preserves in a Mason jar that someone probably put there fifty years ago. I'm probably the first person to clean up there in that long!

Overall, as moves go, this one was a breeze compared to some that I have endured in this sidewinder of a life I'm leading. If Hub is reading this, he will have just groaned in agreement, because the two worst moves EVER were with him. Cue flashback to 20-something me, feeling about the size and helplessness of a two-year old as I stared in horror at the enormous, daunting pile of stuff packed in our Acton apartment. We had not arranged any help, until the night before when I burst into tears under the crushing impossible-ness of it, then in a panic called in some last-minute muscle to help us get it all to Somerville. We had already rented a giant truck, Hub was going to drive; turns out if you rent the truck yourself and do all the driving, you can get just a couple of guys to help with the hauling. It's cheaper because you're just paying the men, not the insurance and all. We got Kevin and Devon, and when I cast back over 15 years to that move, these two men are still two of my favorite low budget superheroes I have yet met. You shoulda seen them with the treadmill! LIKE it was nothin'.

I don't remember where Hub and I were moving from/to when the iced coffee spilled; I DO remember that it was about a thousand degrees, airless and humid, so of course Dumb and Dumber picked that day for non-stop physical labor. Hub got us enormous iced coffees, and while I had sucked mine down like a...well, I sucked it hard...he had yet to take even a single sip. I think we got the coffees at one of those combo Dunkin Donuts/gas stations and he'd stashed his coffee in the cup holder until he was finished putting gas into the van or something. Somehow, before he could even get the first desperately-needed quenching sip, he spilled the whole thing. The plastic cup fell. Cap popped off. Coffee EVERYWHERE. Aside from the fact that no man needed an iced coffee more than Hub at that moment, the mess it made was astonishing. You know those moving vans whose floor is kind of corrugated? Just a series of channels for the coffee to settle into, that's all. That van was worse than a crime scene.

Mulling it over, I declare any move "up" is easier than lateral or the unfortunate "down." I've done them all, and you don't need me to tell you that moving "up" usually means you're in a position to do it more comfortably. You can purchase boxes, I mean good, sound boxes that do not reek of old food or beverage and are uniform in size, instead of making eleventy-six desperate runs to liquor stores and pawing through recycle dumpsters out behind the Office Max. You can hire movers, professionals who don't think twice about your exercise bike or how many books you've collected, instead of cajoling your poor friends into wasting a day sweating and grunting on your behalf, for the privilege of having beer and pizza that they could've gotten for themselves without all the hard work. You can hire cleaners to hit your old place so hard that getting your deposit back is a no-brainer. You all have been through it, you all know what I mean: there is an easy way, and there is a hard way.

This time, being a lateral move, and a sudden one at that, Joey and I did it half "the easy way" and half "the hard way."

The movers were decent, I got a good quote from Boston Flat Rate. Three guys at $84 an hour. They didn't take everything, however, and we had a language issue. But they moved the bulk of it, and we only had left some of the shit we had "stored" in the bedroom closet, and every bit of Joe's studio.

After the "big move" on Sunday, November 28th, with the movers, we had a Saturday morning with our buddy Bill, four trips in his Element for most of Joe's studio. Today, Joe and Marco are getting the very last tail-end of it.

In a way, it wasn't so bad doing the follow-up trips with friends; the first week we were here I was sick, having gotten the terrible cold that had been going around (Joe had it the prior week, which included Thanksgiving day when I was doing most of the packing) and on top of that I got my period, which had me cramping and wretched the whole week on top of the sneezing, coughing and body aches. So little unpacking got done until the next weekend, but enough to make room for the next round of incoming boxes, and then THOSE got unpacked enough to make room for whatever Joe and Marco are going to bring in here at any moment. No more than two trips, I would think, and then...

...WE'RE IN!