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Saturday, July 25, 2009 - 23:38:26
My Father Contemplates War with Sweeden
I'm slowly settling into the new place. My friends Meg, John, and Jamie helped my parents and I unload all my worldly possessions in 30 minutes, which I find pretty impressive. Either that or I just don't own much stuff. Just kidding, I own plenty. Still, I got to see John carry my full sized mattress up all by himself, which I'd heard he could do, but it's really quite something to see.My roommate--a fellow Razorback named Brittaney--is bringing a dining room table soon, and then, we'll be more or less set. I did have to buy a dresser, though, and other than a few brief bouts of homesickness, the dresser is the only part of the move that's brought me to tears.
My old dresser was a little small and which I bought in an antique store with dreams of refinishing it. I never even replaced the missing drawer pull, so after appreciating its potential without doing anything to help it live up to said potential, I sold it on craigslist. I bought a new one at IKEA. And, look, maybe I should have known better, but I dropped a sizable chunk of money in order to get out of my lease early (as if trying to be cartoonishly horrible, Vicki the landlady's immediate response to me telling her I needed to break my lease was to sing-song: "It's gonna cost you!") and paid various deposits all over town, so when I found a nice looking, fairly inexpensive dresser with lots of storage space, I bought it.
My parents were both willing to help me put it together, and soon, we were sorting cams and dowells like puzzle pieces on the dining room floor. Mom and I quickly developed a system, so my father wandered over to the couch and fell asleep. He's good at assembling these sorts of things, but my parents did a lot for me in the process of this move, so if I could screw all the pieces together while he slept, I thought that might be best for everyone.
About 1/3 of the way through, Mom and I hit a snag. (1) There are extra pieces. My first instinct was that we'd left something out, but after flipping through the directions several times, even I must admit we are right. There are pieces that are completely irrelevant to the dresser. (2) The screws on one end of the dresser do not line up with the screws on the other side. Even if we get it together, there will be gaps, and if the drawers fit in at all, they will be crooked, there will probably be gapping, and the whole thing will look like a hot mess. As we figure this out, my father wakes up.
We explained the problem to him, and he is understandably unhappy. He flips through the pictographic directions and confirms that we're screwed. His first reaction is that we should take it back. I stared at the half assembled dresser and hate that plan. I'll have to unscrew every screw, undo every cam, pull out every dowell, and we'll never get it back in the box. They use some sort of sophisticated oragami to pack the pieces in there, and we'll never recreate it. I picture us hauling in two flat boxes with pieces sticking out of the ends and duct tape wrapped generously around the whole thing. It makes me tired just thinking about it.
My father's second plan is to call and ask what our options are. "Look," he says, "there's a picture in here of some happy Sweedish people on the phone with customer service. Of course, there's no phone number listed for you to call, but we should be able to call them." He looks up a number while mom and I ponder the dresser's exoskeleton.
A few minutes later, I hear him talking to customer service. He explains the problem, starting out by simply saying the thing is broken and we can't to put it together. This is true, but I suspect that anyone who's ever had difficulty assembling their furniture has made this argument. This can't be right; it must be broken. So, while he is right, and I can see the evidence that he is right, I'm not surprised the woman on the phone doesn't believe him.
Dad's final solution is to buy a power drill. He's actually surprised that I don't own one, but I'm actually relieved to send him out for it. Everyone was frustrated by then, and I couldn't help but think the source of their frustration is this thing I chose to buy. I didn't make it wrong or include the extra parts, but I bought furniture that had to be assembled. After they were good enough to load me up and helped me move, perhaps they'd done enough and deserved a nice vacation instead of a bonus round that prominently featured a hammer and an Allen wrench. And so, my tension grew and as soon as they were gone, I shed a few hot, guilty tears.
My father is a decent carpenter. He's watched countless hours of building and home improvement shows on PBS on Saturday afternoons, and he built my entertainment center, my bookshelf, and for a while made homemade grandfather clocks. So, armed with a power drill and a hammer, he forced the assembled pieces to bend to his will. One of the drawers stuck a bit, but I figured I just wouldn't put anything in it. Dad grabbed my hammer and pounded away until it slid smoothly in and out. Against all odds, I have a dresser that looks remarkably like the one in the store.
I'm more or less moved, but I wanted to mention that the blog will be moving too. They're working on redoing the Arkansas Times page, and when they do, this blog won't be on the new site. I've been looking into my options, and I'm working on moving my stuff from her to: achickcalledmick.wordpress.com I've laid the groundwork, but I'm flying out to Michigan tomorrow for several days for work and may not have time to get to it right away. I'm working on it, though. I've enjoyed writing it and appreciate that you have taken the time to read it.
And now, I'm off to bed a mere two hours after when I planned to go to bed and roughly four hours before I will wake up and head out again. If there are typos in this, please forgive me, but if I want to get any sleep at all, I'm going to have to skip the proofreading.
Friday, July 17, 2009 - 22:45:20
Things I've Learned About Moving
I mentioned before that I've moved pretty regularly since I left for college. This last move was smoother than most because I'd already learned a few key lessons the hard way.1. Do NOT arrange to have the electricity shut off on the day you're moving out.
This sounds obvious, mostly because it is, but somehow I did it anyway. I'm not great with dates, so now, I don't make any utilities decisions without a calendar in front of me.
2. If you DO make mistake #1, and have to move out of an apartment with no electricity, move during the daytime.
Not only did I have no electricity, but I decided to finish my move after I got off work at the restaurant around 10 or 10:30. That move came at the height of summer, so I figured if I waited until the sun went down, it would be a little cooler.
So, when I realized that I had no power, I had to find a way to clear the place out in the dark. My only option was to light a ton of candles, which is not only a fire hazard, but all those tiny flames made the apartment even hotter.
3. Measure twice, move once.
I had this really cute red, wooden dining room set. The sides of the table folded down, making it pretty narrow. I figured it would easily fit in my Geo Prism; it didn't. I'd already carried the table down two flights of stairs with the leaves occasionally hitting me in the shin, so I wasn't about to carry it back up. I couldn't get it in the car, and I couldn't just leave it there. What if someone took it? I loved that table.
My new apartment was about three blocks away, and since I couldn't think of any better options, I carried it. Picking it up, I managed to grab it by the bottom legs and carry it more or less on my back. Halfway there, a guy saw me, and offered to give me a hand.
"No, I've got it. Thanks, though!" I told him. (There is, perhaps, a lesson within this lesson, which is that if anyone offers to help you carry something slightly heavy and totally unwieldy, you should say yes.)
Let me explain: At the time, I felt like I could easily make it. The table wasn't too heavy. I had a good grip on it. Also, I am not good at asking for or getting help. I feel like I'm imposing. Plus, I am very, very stupid sometimes.
I carried it all the way to the porch in front of my new place. At that point, I couldn't carry it another step, and I abandoned it there. I dragged myself inside and drank a lot of water. That walk had changed things between my table and me. Just sitting on the couch thinking about carrying it a few more feet, I realized I wouldn't care if someone stole it to save me the trouble of bringing it in. No one did, and half an hour later, I scrounged up the energy to move it into the dining room.
4. Don't mess with Mom.
When I left Florida, my parents drove out to help me move. My mother took one look at the living room and gave me A Look. It's a look that says: "I'm actively keeping myself from killing you right now."
The problem was that I had spent weeks getting my things boxed up and stacking those boxes near the front door for easy access, but my roommate had not. Her stuff was still scattered about the house, and there were even giant tufts of stuffing strewn all over the floor from a stuffed animal that her beagle had destroyed. When I explained that all my stuff was ready to go, she softened. I stopped worrying that she would try to choke me with the power of her mind, but I have filed that expression away as one to be avoided at all costs. When they came to pick up my stuff today, it was all neatly stacked in three centralized areas.
5. It will get done.
All week, when people have asked about how the packing is going, this has been my answer. Sometimes I didn't believe it, but I'm intensely deadline driven. Things might not come out the way I want them to, but they will get done on time. I worried Thursday night that I had spent too much time at goodbye dinners and Trivia Night and not enough time packing, but I looked around the room, took a deep breath, and grabbed another box. It needs to get done, so it will. Because if it doesn't, I have to face my mother's wrath.
These are the things I can never get right:
1. The food situation.
Moving food from one fridge to another a few blocks away or even across town is no problem. But, for the big moves, I try to plan out meals to eat most of what I have. At some point, though, I don't want to buy more groceries, but what I have left doesn't go together. This week I tried to figure out how to make a full meal out of frozen waffles, a can of soup, frozen fruit, a jar of pickles and beer.
At least this time, I conserved enough milk for my coffee, so I didn't have to steal a handful of creamers from the coffee bar at a gas station.
2. Pack everything you don't need/I need everything.
Last night, I got to that point where everything I hadn't packed seemed essential somehow, but there was so much of it, that I wouldn't have time to pack it in the morning or at lunch. So, I packed all of it, regardless of it's usefulness. This afternoon, I realized that because I had packed all my silverware, I didn't have anything to eat my leftover pasta with. I meant to grab a plastic fork from the break room at work but forgot. So, I stopped by Sonic and ordered an ice cream sundae because it would come with a spoon.
After all the moving I've done, I'm still not good at it. I am, however, trying to avoid making the same stupid mistakes twice. If I'm going to screw up, I like to do it in new and different ways each time.
Thursday, July 09, 2009 - 00:08:44
Boxes, boxes everywhere
So, I’m moving next week. Moving is mostly a terrible experience, so it never ceases to amaze me that I do it as often as I do. In college, I once moved a total of 6 times in a calendar year, and that was when I could fit move everything I owned in a Geo Prism. Now I have an entertainment center and a seven foot couch, and it occurs to me—as it always does when I am preparing to move—that I should know more weight lifters and guys with pickup trucks. I tend to know guys like my friend Jeremy who referred to his black Honda as his “sensitive man car.” Since I left for college, I don’t think I’ve ever lived in one place for more than two years, so the smart thing to do would be to court the burly, truck driving demographic as soon as the dishes are unpacked. But I never do.
I’m moving to
So, I’m sitting right now on my seven foot couch surrounded by the half dozen boxes that I’ve managed to pack and wondering what I’m going to do with all of my stuff. The prevailing philosophy just before a move is to go into “fire sale” mode. Everything must go! I’ve made the first trip to Goodwill with a trunk full of stuff. I’ve got three bags of things I’m donating to the library. (Among them is the copy of Confessions of a Video Vixen that I was previously too ashamed to give them.)
I’ve started to ask myself the hard questions. Like: Why have I carried a pale blue wig with me across three states? I decided this is the move where I say: No, the wig isn’t coming with me. But I want the wig to have a good home. That? That is a trait I get from my grandmother. We tend to keep things longer than we should, which is why she still has an old textbook my father used when he was in high school that he or one of his brothers hated so much they actually took it out back and shot it. We hang on to these things because you never know when you might need a blue wig or a textbook riddled with bullet holes.
I’ve held on to the wig because I have thought for many moves now that maybe it would come in handy for Halloween. And the fact that I might use it combined with the fact that I couldn’t think of anyone else who might has been enough to keep me dragging it from apartment to apartment.
But last week I had a thought. I sent a message to one of the guys I met when I took the workshop with Improv Little Rock, asking if they had any use for a blue wig. Specifically, one that looked like this:
His response? “Yes. Yes, we do.”
Now that that’s been taken care of, I just have to fill up the rest of the empty boxes stacked all over my apartment. I'll confess the urge to just get rid of it all is strong, but where would I ever find another Xena Warrior Princess doll or the Cher workout video circa "If I Could Turn Back Time"?
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