"Moving"
Definition: A person or family relocate their habitation, and in the process relocate their possessions as well.
Example Sentence: "We 'moved' out of our apartment in Redondo Beach."
See Also: Cleaning, Exhausting, Emotional, Hellish, Sweaty, Test of Any Relationship
For months, Jordi and I have been talking and dreaming about one day escaping LA and traveling the world. As hard as it was for Jordi to work at Webcor, the paychecks allowed us to save up for such a trip. When they laid him off the last day of June, we figured our time was now. So we bought plane tickets. We told our landlord we would be moving out the end of August. We called our friends and family and told them we would be visiting. And we continued on with life as usual.
But then came the day when the first boxes were taped together, and the first dishes and picture frames were packed.
All of the sudden our dreams were turning into reality, and reality was not pleasant!
We figured our trip was going to take about three months, and since we didn't (and still don't) know where we will move to when we get back, we decided to put all our stuff in storage for the meantime. We discovered that storage units in Norco are MUCH cheaper than anything convenient. So we rented out a storage unit in Norco. Who needs convenience?
Our neighbor, Marcello, generously (and perhaps rashly) offered to lend us his truck while moving. We took him up on it, as it would definitely be able to hold more than the Element.
So we packed up the trailer with its maximum weight of 2,000 pounds, and proceeded to pack up the truck with its maximum weight of a couple hundred pounds. Dressers, heavy boxes of dishes, our beast of a couch, coffee table, dining room table, all packed in the most strategic and squishy way. It was impressive how much we fit in!
As we were finishing up packing up the truck, I suddenly remembered I had an orthodontist appointment in the afternoon at 2:30. It was then 10:30 am. Norco is about 1.5 hours away. So that gave us about an hour to unload in order to get to my appointment on time. Alright, game on!
With both trailer and truck bed full to the brim, the next step was to hook the trailer onto the truck.
"By the way Kirsten, Marcello's truck is stick shift, so maybe you should drive it."
My jaw drops.
I can drive stick when its not a truck loaded with stuff pulling a trailer tottering with beastly couches. I knew I could definitely not safely back it up to the trailer and maneuver it out of the driveway, so the task fell to Jordi.
I'm not really sure if Jordi has ever learned how to drive stick shift, but at least he knows how to maneuver trailers. He semi successfully was able to back the truck out of its parking spot and over to where the trailer was parked.
There is a very steep driveway leading from the parking area for our apartment complex to the street. We were attempting to get part way up the steep driveway in order to have an angle to hook the trailer on the truck. Jordi couldn't get the truck up the driveway, so I got in to try. I completely burned rubber and made it to the top of the hill in less than a blink of an eye. So THEN we had to back it back down the hill. Finally we got it an angle, but now we couldn't lift the trailer up enough to hitch it on. So I had to go hang off the back of the trailer while Jordi lifted with all his might and FINALLY got it to stay on and click into place. About this time another neighbor comes down the stairs and into her car to leave, and we are completely blocking everything. We also have about three other neighbors leaning over railings shouting directions at us. The neighbor in the car patiently waits about 15 minutes while Jordi maneuvered the truck and trailer all the way to the far end of the parking area to get a running start of the hill. The neighbor in her car left, I jumped in the truck, Jordi gassed it and we got into second gear and charged it up the hill, and we were off........!!!!!
Alright, so now we had about half an hour to unpack so I could be back for my appointment, we were sweating profusely, but at least we were finally bumping along.
Sitting at a stop light, an old guy cruises up next to us, motioning and telling us in his broken English that we have drawers falling out of the dressers. So I run out and pull the drawer out.
"Oh ya," Jordi says when I hop in, "I forgot I ran out of tape, so I didn't finish taping the drawers."
Next stop light, and we get told there is another drawer falling out, so out I hop again.
We stalled a couple of times, with the Hawthorne traffic swelling around us, and drawers stacked up on my lap. The whole experience was so ridiculous, it was becoming comical. Plus the truck didn't have air conditioning, which was just fabulous.
We finally made it to the storage unit in the middle of nowhere, sweaty and tired. For some reason the sprinklers were on in the front lawn, which makes no sense considering we're supposedly having a water shortage, and they were watering their lawn in the middle of the day in the middle of summer in the middle of the desert. Oh well, they felt great to run through!!
We got our key and headed to the unit. We unpacked in record time, booked it back to Redondo Beach, just in time to see the glorious cloud cover coming up from the water. (We did have one mishap - the trailer tailgate fell off and started scraping along the freeway, so we pulled over five lanes and attempted to put it back together on the side of the freeway! We were just glad it didn't happen when we had all our stuff back there!) I was 8 minutes late to my appointment - sweaty and smelly, but impressed with myself for being there at all!
I walked back to our apartment, it was now about 3 pm, and all I wanted was to finally sit down and have lunch. I walked in the door dreaming about my lunch and sitting experience to come, and Jordi welcomed me with these words,
"Hey Kirst, we really should keep packing."
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