Moving Trucks and Space Issues

How is it that a room full of furniture looks bigger than an empty room? I am loving this concept even though I do not understand it. Turns out we have even more room in our new place than we thought we would..great news! Getting here was a bit more of an adventure. Priorities of men and women vary slightly causing the inevitable "you are annoying me but I don't want to ruin this fun moment so I am going to grin and bear it" portion of your new, shared life.

We had a wonderful last evening in our old apartment. My uncle came by to purchase a TV and we all ate Costco pizza on the floor (I forgot how good that pizza is, I mean not NYC, but still yummy.) Then Dawn and Mike came by and we went to the Surly Goat for a few drinks. Just what you need, find a really cool bar just a few blocks away the day before you move...C'est la Vie, there will be cool bars in Long Beach. Of course 5:45 a.m. rolls around far too quickly as the movers arrive slightly after 6am.

Now Dawn had told me the night before that hiring movers was the best money she ever spent. After watching them load our apartment in record time with very little lifting on my part I 100% agree with this statement. AMAZING and left plenty of energy for the unpacking on the other end. Here's where the issue with priority comes in, you see before we even had the movers scheduled, Chris had scheduled our cable appointment. The cable guy was coming between 1 and 4 to set up the cable. It was now noon, we had no TV's set up nor any stands on which to put the TV. An hour previous I had kindly, gently suggested Chris start putting the TV stand together. We have just gotten a new TV (thank you wedding money) the size of a movie screen to put in the living room. I am a TV junky, but I can honestly say I never in my life expected to own a TV almost as wide as Gretchen's mom is tall. It seems a little ludicrous but we got a good deal and it makes him happy.

Of course my suggestions went ignored as we belabored where the desks were really going to go. This was an important decision as I made it clear once my oversized, massively heavy, armoire desk was placed it was never going to move again without the hiring of many men or purchasing our own crane. It was decided...so now he's going to put the stand together, right? Nope, now we are going through the drawers and making sure the shelves in the closet are cool.

"Chris, it's getting late, wanna put the stand together? I will help."

"Okay." I think the extent of my helping was deciding what side of the box we should open as the insides were almost entirely glass. Shockingly, we managed to pull out all the pieces without breaking anything. The look on my husband's face was priceless.

"What's wrong?"

"I thought it came in three pieces."

"Why did you think that?"

"It looked like that on the box."

"Okay, so???"

"I don't know how I am going to get this together in time. I'll start doing it, you start unwrapping the TV."

It is my turn to look at him incredulous. Seriously? I can lift things. I am quite strong for a girl, heck for a person, but I was in no way dumb enough to think it was a good idea for me to be in charge of a television only slightly shorter than myself. The bulky aspect alone makes it a bad idea. My head begins swirling like the eyeballs do on a classic WB cartoon as I have images of me slicing the TV screen or pulling too hard and the top pops off. Terrified. But pride also prevented me from saying no.

Needless to say we got the TV set up by the time the cable guy was done with the other rooms, though I felt judged from the moment the cable guy arrived until the time he left. I actually think he was a bit annoyed we managed to get the TV up in time. I think he was hoping he could leave before we finished so we would have to have another service call. With a little team work we made it....then I opened a beer.

You Sold it for What?

Garage sale day! Here we are, purging are belongings by putting them out on the side of the road in the hopes someone will want to pay money for our junk. Initially, getting Chris to focus on finding things to sell seemed near impossible. But he got up early in the morning to help me lug all my things out to the road and drive me around to put up signs. Of course there were people arriving way before the posted time, I had placed ads, and we were still trying to set things up. Even before we begin, Chris is practically giving things away.

I have learned from my friend Dawn that it is best not to put prices on things but just come up with a price on the day. I did not realize this was going to mean my husband would try to sell everything I own for a quarter. I say that but it seems like he has two internal price points. It is either 20 dollars or 25 cents. I am not sure where the logic comes in with that, but it was how it was.

Things are going well, things are selling it is moving along. But as Chris watches things he thought would never sell make a bit of money, he suddenly decides to start going through his things, you know, the thing I asked him to do three weeks ago? Now instead of having someone outside to help me, he is constantly in the house digging for more things to sell. fine, I can handle it until I see him drag out the chair his grandfather carved by hand.

"You're bringing that out just to sit on, right?" I say as a leading question as to imply the appropriate response.

"I was just going to see what someone offered for it."

"Then take it back in."

"Why can't we see? It isn't very comfortable."

"We can get new cushions. I cannot get a new husband after your father kills you because we are supposed to be taking care of that chair. If you don't want it in our new place, then I suggest you give it back to you father, cause we aren't selling it." How am I more sentimental about a chair made by a man who died before I was in the picture?

"We can just try. You are selling the ornaments."

That's his defense? Seriously? The ornaments he was referring to were my ex-boyfriend's Christmas ornaments. We had stayed friends for quite awhile but then we lost touch. I had tried to contact the man a number of times to return his ornaments. A collection of Christmas Tree bobbles from the year of his birth onward. It wasn't my fault he wouldn't return phone calls. After many years of storing them, I decided I wasn't moving them so I put them out in the hopes they found a good home.

"Not the same. I no longer know Toby, you still know father, you like your father. You call your dad and get permission and then you can try." This is followed by an eye roll and the phone being whipped out to place the call. At which time he discovered I was correct and his father would rather have the chair back than have us sell it to some stranger. Like that took a rocket scientist to figure out! I have now been guilted into putting the ornaments back on our doorstep because I was feeling guilty about selling them. I still didn't want to move them! What a waste of space.

As the garage sale begins to wind down, I start selling everything for a quarter. We get rid of almost everything, or so I think. Most of the end things went to a guy who was shopping but driving a motorcycle. With a bit of help from lots of duct tape we managed to get everything attached to his saddlebags, frame, and back pack. I am not sure what he was going to do with all that junk, but as he drove off I found myself very concerned with whether or not he could even turn a corner.

We start loading the truck with everything to go to Goodwill and I realize I still have a ton of stuff left. If I had the energy I might have a second sale the next day, but it doesn't seem worth it. There is one wicker basket left out front that some lady is supposed to come back for, so we bring down the driveway and put it on our step. Needless to say, she doesn't come back, but surprisingly the next morning Chris walks out to find 2 women shoving it in their car. He confronts the offenders with the fact they are "stealing" and they claim to have thought it was "junk." I might believe that if it was still sitting on the street, but it was on our doorstep and we live in the back apartment. Do you go and take things off people's doorsteps? At that point I realized all the Christmas ornaments I was trying to figure out what to do with were gone. Someone had literally stolen Christmas from our front door. I ended up selling the wicker basket to the thieves and counting my blessings that the Christmas ornaments had sorted themselves out. If Toby ever calls I can honestly say they were stolen though I am not sure he would believe it even though it is true.