Moving is a Pain

This past week my family had to move from our house in Kirkland to Clearview, where the mice roam freely through houses at night. And though we’ve had many blessings, such as finding an affordable house, having plenty of help moving, or even having a friend cook dinner for us, you cannot escape the morons that rear their heads in stressful situations. The following is a series of stories focused on our move:

Friday: Feeling bored I walked down to the Shell station near my house and got a pop and sunflower seeds. After work my dad, mom and I left to pick up the moving truck. The big moving day would be tomorrow, but we had decided to take a load over tonight, to help lighten the load. Also, as we were moving into a smaller house we had to sell our large couch and get rid of my parent’s king sized bed. Because of this we had to pick up a mattress and couch we had found on Craigslist. The people we had purchased the furniture from were both friendly and helpful.  The night was long and hard (moving my dad’s desk was a pain) but we finally finished and went to bed in our house one last time.

Saturday: I woke up at 8:30 and started helping my parents pack. Then some people showed up, then we moved. Nothing interesting happened until later when my friend who had helped us backed his truck into an area to the side of our house in order to make room for the moving truck. Ten minutes after he had done this he found that his truck was totally stuck in mud, which caused a whole fiasco which resulted in his parents signing him up for AAA. Nothing else happened we went to sleep.

Sunday: I woke up at 11 and wandered into the living room, where my family was deciding where to go for breakfast. Eventually we decided on Shari’s. Once we were done I found out my parents had a gig singing with some old friends and everyone would be going. I was tired but it was an entertaining performance during which I spaced out and laughed at my own jokes. When we got home we sat in the living room, except Emily (my sister) who sat directly behind the couch in the dining room. Now Emily is 21, and in her whole life she has never handled emergency situations well, and anytime she freaks out I assume something is on fire. So as the silence was filled by her screaming I started looking for a flame. Meanwhile everyone else was jumping up and down asking her what was wrong. “There’s a mouse in Mom’s purse!” We set out some poison that night.

Monday: It was time to finish packing up the house, or so we thought. We had a large pile of junk that was to go to Goodwill, a pile for the dump, and a pile for storage. On top of that we had to clean the carpets of the house, because my dad owns a carpet cleaner. It was a lot to get done, and because we had so much stuff left we hired a friend who had a trailer, Richard. Goodwill was first, so we loaded up and headed out around 1pm. Once there we had an employee help us unload, which made the process much quicker (before it had just been me, Richard and my mom, as everyone else was at work). At the back of the trailer we had a little movie hutch which Emily and I had bought about a year ago from Goodwill, but now had no space for it. We had barely used it in the time we had it, and it stayed stationary most of the time. When the worker looked at it he said “That’s no good. The top is kind of loose when you pull on it.” I thought, we got this from you. But I didn’t want to start a fight, so I kept my mouth shut and we left, hutch in the trailer.

By the time we got back we noticed it was close to 3, so we decided to do a dump run next. The nearest dump was not near, and around four we started to worry that it may close before we could get there. So Richard pulled out his phone, called his wife and told her our situation. She quickly looked up the hours of the dump online, which said “7am – 7pm.” Ok. We had time. So we strapped down the load and drove to the dump in rush hour traffic, arriving at the dump at 5:15. Gate closed. A small entrance off to the side, so we drove in and got up to the booth.

“I’m sorry, we’re closed.”

“We can see that, but your website said you closed at seven. Can be please just drop this off. It’ll only take a minute.”

“No. We were just about to leave. The closing time has been five for about two years now.”

“Your website said seven.”

“I know. Our website is wrong.”

At this point it took all my will power to avoid peeing on her. IF YOUR WEBSITE IS WRONG WHY DIDN’T YOU FIX IT YOUR RETARD! Because of you Richard and I have to come back and do this TOMORROW, but no. I wouldn’t want to inconvenience you, oh mighty queen of stars. I’m sure you’re totally married and have anyone who loves you. In the end, Richard dropped his trailer full of trash off at our house and went home.

Tuesday: I had my first final for Shoreline Community College this day. Or rather, the first part of my first final. My piano teacher decided we needed to come in two days for her final, Tuesday we would meet in her office one on one and she’d test us on our scales and chord progressions. Wednesday we would have to play a solo in front of the class. Keep in mind I now live in Clearview, which is not near Shoreline in any way. Because of this I could no longer take the bus to school (as it would take too long) so my mom drove me to class for my five minute final, which worked out as we still had work to do at our Kirkland house.

                My teacher was a disorganized person. She was always telling us we had done stuff we hadn’t, and she would teach us the same thing over and over (the first day she taught us the Cmajor scale 3 times. Not even kidding.) Because of this I had no clue where her office was. She had posted a room number under her name last day of class “2509.” I realized the night before that the music building was the 800 building, and therefore he room number didn’t make sense, and after looking at the campus map I was even more confused. According to the map the 2500 building was the “Mechanics and dentistry” building. Not music at all. It occurred to me her office number may be posted in her syllabus, so I check it out and sure enough “806” IS written under office. I felt relieved.

                I arrived at SCC 20 minutes early, which gave me plenty of time to search for her room. After five minutes I found 806, and to my surprise it was a room in which I had taken another music class and it looked nothing like an office. This couldn’t be right. I freaked out and started trekking across campus to the 2500 building, hoping to find my piano teacher, but life hates me and I soon found that the 2500 building’s room’s stopped at 2508… I ran back to the 800 building, five minutes before my test started. At two till, I found her room, 809. Apparently she mistook a 6 for a 9. Not to my surprise, she was behind schedule. Of course, when she got to me I took less than two minutes to test and leave.

                With that out of the way I went to my house, where Richard had already left for the dump. When he got back we loaded up our things for donation and took it to St. Vincent De Paul, as it was closer and we were on a timeline. Once there we found that St. V’s wouldn’t take a quarter of what we had packed, including four glass tables and a box of books. The glass tables they said were “Hard to sell” I rolled my eyes, but left them on the trailer. As for the box of books, they said “We can’t take any toys.” I looked in the box and found one toy stuffed in the corner, which I took out. “No. We can’t take any of the books, because of the plastic covers.”

“…What?” I asked.

“The paint used on the toys has lead in it.”

“…Ok… So why can’t you take the books?”

“Because children’s books have plastic covers and there’s lead in the paint.”

There were two books with plastic covers in the box, but they wouldn’t let me remove them, saying “It’s too much work. We don’t want it.”

                I gave them a glare and put the box back on. A lot of the books were ones I had read as a child. Clearly I had died of lead poisoning, so they couldn’t take the books.

Wednesday: The second half of my final was this day, and I totally rocked it. Afterwards my mother and I headed back to our Kirkland house for our last two loads of moving. This time we had borrowed someone else’s truck, as we didn’t have much. We made a quick run to our storage, and then to our house and we were done. Now, because our new house didn’t have internet yet, and I had an online final due in the next two days, I called went to a friend’s house and took my test. I ended up staying the night at his house and left early the next morning.

Thursday: While over at his house my family was up getting ready for work. Emily was dressed and just about to put her shoes on when she noticed something odd. She turned her shoe upside down and a small pile of mouse poison spilled onto the floor. Apparently the mice had decided her fuzzy boots were a good place to rest at night, and store up for winter. Fortunately we now knew they had been eating the poison... Later that night I had to get the trash from the curb. I grabbed my worn out shoes and tried to put them on when something hit my hand. Sunflower seeds. The same seeds that I had been eating all day. The mice had been in them and I had been eating them…  I dumped the bag into the trash and brushed my teeth.

Friday: I woke up at noon, feeling rested from the week. As I sat up in bed I looked at my laptop sitting on my nightstand. Mouse poop. On my laptop. Which was right by my head at night. I shuddered.

This brings me to now. Now I share my experiences with you, the people of the interwebs. I have nothing to say in closing but this: Moving is a pain.

- Taylor