Moving - It's not for the faint of heart - Or For Old Fat People

I saw some old friends of mine yesterday that I haven't seen in a long time. It was SO good to see them. They even brought tears to my eyes. I lovingly rubbed my hands all over them and thought of all the good times we've had.

No. They weren't people.

I visited my things in storage.

Well, visited sounds like I sat down and had a cup of tea and crumbcakes.

It was more down and dirty than that.

Maybe I'd better explain. We've had some things in storage  for 5 1/2 years or since we've been on the road. Yes, I know. It's silly. It's stupid. The money we've spent on storage could have bought all new furniture.

But there isn't much furniture in storage. I gave  most of it away to my kids. Except for the dresser that Jim SAWED in half because he couldn't get down the stairs (even though, somehow, DUH, the movers were actually able to get it UP the stairs). But I digress.

The only furniture I have in storage is my kitchen set, a beautiful wooden desk and chair, the rocking chair that I ROCKED my babies in, and a shelf that my father made. Granted I could have bought a new table and desk, but I couldn't have REPLACED the rocker or shelf. TOO many memories.

Jim said that he would have just taken pictures of all my possessions, then gotten rid of the stuff. When I missed them, he'd show me the photos.

Nice, I know. That's why I call him, "The Tin Man".

He needs to visit the Wizard of Oz to get a heart.

Anyjunk, back to my story. So. All these years of paying for storage, and the storage place (#1) continually raising their fees, we finally decided to yank our stuff out of there.

And move it to another storage place (#2).

#2 is $100 CHEAPER than #1. It's farther out in the country, and, granted we rented a smaller area, a 10 x 10, instead of a 10 x 15. Everything fit.

Do you know what this means? For 5 1/2 years, I've paid for that extra 5 square feet.  I don't know how much money I threw away, but I could have had a couple of fun days in Vegas at the slots.....maybe even throw in a show or two. Or I could have gone to my favorite restaurant, Bob Chin's, for their most excellent crab legs a few times. I have NEVER seen crab legs so big. NEVAH!

But no. I have a money tree growing in my yard. Do you want a snipping off of it?

Yeah right. As if. I don't even have a BACK YARD!

The #2 place had a truck for our use, which was great. Jim and I drove to #1 with the name of the #2 place plastered all over the truck for ALL THE WORLD TO SEE. It was obvious what we were doing. When I went into the office and informed them that we were vacating our space, he asked me to fill out a little card. It asked for the reason why we were leaving. I couldn't lie now could I? "Found a cheaper place to rent", I scribbled.

We began making our one of a bazillion, million, hundred treks down the long hallway with a couple of carts. We had pep in our step for maybe the first five trips.

It was fun to see my old stuff, like my mix master, my bread machine, my paintings. I have two small wooden rocking elephants that my brother, Bob, made for my kids. That really brought a tear to my eye. As did seeing the clock I took from my parent's house that chimed every hour,  and the magazine rack my Dad made me. Then there was the old dresser I used growing up and that my sister (Linda) wrote a note in the bottom drawer to my twin sister and me. We took several pictures with Jim's phone, but they didn't turn out. The writing is very light in pencil. In the note she wrote something to the fact that she had to give up HER dresser to her sisters "Loran and Hardy", or "Fatso and Skinny". I WAS NEVER FAT as a kid! Pam was always SKINNY! LOOK!

from left to right, Pat, Pam

She continued on that we were always getting into deep, deep holes (trouble).

She's a liar! Liar, liar pants on fire! Nose as long as a telephone wire!

Sorry. I guess I regressed a little there. The point is, how could I get rid of that dresser? That, my friends, is priceless.

I thought I was pretty good at marking what was inside the boxes. But I missed a few (or Jim did). I thought it was funny (at first) when Jim would ask, "What's in this box?"

Seriously? Did he think I MEMORIZED each box and what was in it? I hardly remember what I did yesterday, let alone 5 years ago.

So this was funny the first time he asked me, but by the fourth time, I was ready to hit him over the head with said box, if I had the energy.

We loaded maybe 70% of our stuff in the truck on the first run. Made a quick stop for lunch, and drove the 25 miles to the #2 place. We were dismayed to see that they had no carts for easy unloading. The truck DID come with a dolly, so that was good. The bad news was, that dolly had a hard time standing up for some reason. At one point in the day it fell back and hit me right in the chest and just about knocked the breath out of me.

I was too tired to cry.

It took us a loooonnng time to unload the truck. I had to run out and get some water because Jim was sweating profusely and he was cramping up.

We got stuck in rush hour traffic as we headed back to #1. Jim stopped to buy some Gatorade, and felt better immediately, so his electrolytes needed replenishing.  By this time our son was getting off of work. I called him to help us. I told him dinner would be involved, and it was like holding a carrot in front of a horse's nose. He was there in no time flat.

He took one look at his parents and knew he did the right thing. Because even though he was tired from working a full day of loading trucks, he was NO WAY as tired as his parents.

We got that second truck loaded up pretty quick. Granted it was mostly boxes. Book boxes, I might add. Even though we donated 650 books to the library before we left. Go figure.

We stopped for dinner, then on to storage place #2. We got all our crap stuff in the 10 x 10 space, pulled the door shut, locked it, and called it a day. It was 9:00 pm. We had been working since 10:00 am.

We were tired.

The old gray mare? She ain't what she used to be. And her mate's even MORE ain't what HE used to be.

We drove home in silence. A half hour later we were both showered and lying in bed, listening to our muscles complaining to us.

I turned and said to Jim, "You know, if we were rich, we could order a couple of masseuses over to massage us all over. Wouldn't that feel great?"

Then I thought a minute and said, "What am I saying? If we were rich, we wouldn't be feeling this way to BEGIN with, because somebody else would have done the moving FOR US!"

Jim snored.