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.

Packing

So you think you know your new husband, right? So you've been told girls are crazy and indecisive, right? I challenge both those assertions as proven by trying to pack and move together for the first time. Packing is complicated enough with one person, but with two you have compounded the problem exponentially. Now, mathematically I know that sentence makes no sense, as 1 to the second power is actually less than 1 multiplied by 2, but I am thinking it is an exponent more in line with the number of years you have lived in the place you are moving out of as stuff seems to breed other stuff.

Not only are you likely to have different opinions about what is valuable or not, you also seem to be married to a man who at one point says, "throw it all out," and then flips out every time you are getting rid of something...I refer to a dolphin statue. The conversation goes a little something like this:

"But you love dolphins."

"Yes, I do. But it just sits around catching dust and I am not attached to it."

"You can't throw it out because of me."

"I'm not, I am giving it away because I don't care about it enough to move it."

"You have to keep it."

"I don't want to keep it."

"Why are you keeping the other one then?"

Now how does one tactfully answer this question? You see I have gotten myself in a bit of a pickle at this point. I no longer care about the other dolphin statue because it is from an ex-boyfriend who, while we stayed friends at first, is now married and no longer allowed to speak to other girls. He kind of ceased to be important in my life at that point, thereby neither is the product of his trip to the Mall of America. The other statue is from the family of my college roommate and I love them so I love the nick knack. It is worth the dusting time, bubble wrap time, and general moving.

BUT, in order to say this I have to admit, aloud, I kept the old boyfriend statue all the way through our dating, engagement, and wedding and I am only getting rid of it now. Now in my defense, that wasn't a choice I made, it was simply that it sat on the top shelf of the book shelf and I NEVER even thought about it. It was just there...as proven by the dust so thick you had to use a chisel to chip it off. It was only because I was packing that I even took the time to think about the existence of the figurine and where it came from in the first place, making it of less value than the cost of the bubble wrap to secure it. So instead the conversation ends like this...

"Craig is having a hard time right now, he's likes the dolphins, will you just let him take it?"

That's right, I threw my friend under the bus. Thanks for taking the bullet, Craig.

Indecisive and crazy to be proven in the next post.