Moving Day!
We had a memorable day, which turned out to be part 1 of our moving.
My brother, who was to supply an 18’ rail truck with a lift, never showed or responded to repeated voicemails. Turned out he had a bunch of stuff to do today, and had gotten the word that we were doing the move Sunday instead of Saturday due to the alleged rain, but never got the message that we were doing the move on Sunday. Or something like that.
He can help me Tuesday evening, so that will be the main part of part 2 of the move. We might not have needed part two were it not for the other excitement of the day. Everything went more than smoothly at first, apart from my brother’s absence.
I filled our truck before people were quite due to arrive. That was a light load to make it easy for Deb to drive, as we’d take both vehicles on one trip, she’d stay there, and I’d drive the truck for the next trip or two.
Sherri arrived as I was finishing that, and we filled her car with boxes and a couple odd items like the laptop.
As we finished that, my brother in law and nephew arrived. We filled their van to the point of sagging. Poor van.
Then Mark arrived, driving an Avalanche. Those don’t look very truck-like in capacity, but turn out to be impressively spacious and versatile. We were able to fit most of the bookcases and a ton of boxes and odd stuff.
Still thinking my brother would show, after calling him and leaving another voicemail, I left a note on the door and we all went off to the new place. Mark and Sherri hit Dunkin Donuts for iced coffee, so trailed well behind.
Shortly after we got there and started unloading, Sherri called to report she’d been in an accident. She was okay but her car was not. Looks borderline on a total. We tossed everything out of the truck, onto the driveway, and I quickly went to pick her up and transfer the stuff from her car. Meanwhile, Mark saw her and stopped too. I couldn’t get onto the correct side of the road, so we staged the stuff onto his tailgate and the sidewalk until I could move the truck close.
I was impressed with the Middleboro cops. They were efficient, professional, friendly, helpful beyond the call of duty, just as nice as could be under the circumstances. They helped her call for a tow. They explained in detail how the process worked, and her right to appeal when she was determined to be at fault. What happened is she pulled off the highway ramp and didn’t see the other car coming. I’m having a little trouble picturing the angle and locations of the two cars for the damage to have been what it was; basically a caved in front end and a demonstration of the efficacy of crumple zones. The damage is huge, but the airbag didn’t deploy. The other vehicle didn’t appear damaged, though apparently it had a flat tire as a result of the accident. Due to the circumstances, they were supposed to give her a citation. They chose to make it a written warning, rather than making her day even worse by adding a $100 fine to it, figuring the trauma and the surcharge on her insurance were bad enough.
The whole thing took eons. Eventually Mark went on ahead, several minutes before we were done with the tow guy, who seemed as nice yet efficient as the cops.
When we got to the apartment, my brother in law had left, taking my nephew home so he could get done the homework he’d put off all weekend. Luckily, he came back in time to save me. Sherri moved everything around the apartment, so boxes were more or less in the rooms where the stuff would ultimately go. That burned off her adrenaline, and saved her from the up and down stairs work. I know she has leg problems, and that might have flared it up. Mark has rheumatoid arthritis and couldn’t help much with carrying stuff. He was mainly there to provide transportation and coffee. Deb is limited by pregnancy and had to keep Sadie, who was a super good girl today, out of trouble.
When my brother in law returned, he brought my sister, which was cool as she got to see the place and the kidlet, but with the MS, walking with a cane (though I think that’s mainly an excuse to have the cane for whacking the kids) and barely able to climb the stairs, she was only there as a partial observer.
We had to bring both vehicles back to Stoughton, and the stuff we’d need to be able to stay here another couple of nights. The kitchen stuff is largely still here, but we’d been eating down the food. Not that there’s no food, but it’s not in convenient forms and suffers from a lack of complete sets of ingredients. We ordered two pizzas on the idea of supper plus at least one meal tomorrow. Sadie was pleased. She loves pepperoni. She had about a slice of pizza, mainly eating the sauce, cheese and meat off of the crust, plus a bunch of mixed veggies and a couple slices of orange. And Cran-Grape, which as long as you don’t water it down is her favorite thing in the world.
As Sherri said, she’ll always remember my moving day. Yep. It’s one of those.
OMG what a mess. I know about that whole being a pathetic helper thing, being another RA dork. That’s one of the reasons we chose to go with the moving company, I wouldn’t have to lift boxes, and J didn’t trust me driving a big truck 3,000 miles....
Glad you all got it started
Yay for Sadie being so good!
Posted by caltechgirl on 09/19 at 12:08 AMMoving serely is one hell of an exprience. i have been moving constantly since the last one year and I fully empathize with you. The really worst part of moving out is organizing and packing the things. God save me the next time.
Posted by amber on 09/19 at 07:23 AM
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