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• The joys of moving

I’ve never much cared for hobos or their hobo lifestyle. They’re always so devil-may-care, riding the rails, stealing pies cooling in an open window from unsuspecting housewives and generally not having a care in the world. I’ve always been more of a stay-at-home sort of guy, but this past weekend, I will admit that I began to envy the hobo. It’s not because of the way they are or because they have no strings tying them down. It’s just because they have so few possessions. It’s easy for a hobo to pack up and move. Hell, they do it every day. For a fella like me, moving is far more complicated.

The hobo only needs a stick with a handkerchief full of his possessions tied to it, and he’s ready to head on down the road to another city. I need about a hundred boxes, five rolls of that heavy packing tape, a friend who couldn’t think of an excuse not to help me and a big-assed moving truck just so I could move eight short city blocks down the line. Somewhere into the second day of this fiasco, a can of gasoline and a Zippo lighter seemed like a much better alternative.

They say the key to moving is preparation, and I’m sure they’re right. They should probably amend it to “proper preparation,” though. It’s good to have everything packed away into boxes, but it’s much better to have things you don’t need for awhile packed away in boxes. There are things, such as silverware, underwear and Tupperware, that you will invariably need over the seven-day period between packing and actually moving. Having ignored such a thing, I was forced to eat with a big wooden spoon, chafe and throw away leftovers. If you don’t think ahead, it really adds a degree of difficulty to an already suck-ass situation.

With the packing out of the way, it really doesn’t get any easier. First of all, let me say that I don’t really have much that’s expensive or important to me in the way of possessions. This became clearer and clearer to me each time I carried my crap down the stairs. It also became clear that I had far too many possessions that were cheap and unimportant to me. It’s tough to do a cost/benefit analysis on something as meaningless as a microwave stand as it’s banging into your already bruised shin on the way down the steps. I could do without everything I moved, and yet, for some reason, I couldn’t leave any of it behind.

There’s also the dilemma of figuring out the order you plan to move things. I chose to move all the small boxes first and even after the fact, I’m not sure it was the correct decision. It’s just that the small things are pretty simple, so I treated them as some sort of a warm-up for the larger items. In addition to that, it also gave me the illusion of progress that is necessary for a task such as moving, which sucks balls beyond belief.

The problem with this is that the old place is a flight of stairs up. It’s easy to carry things down, but it became a real problem just getting my tired, empty-handed ass back up the stairs to carry more stuff down to the truck. I toyed with the idea of going to a health club and telling everyone on the Stairmaster that I had found a way to get the same workout and also help out a poor bastard at the same time. It’s called actually going up and down stairs. I seriously doubt they would have went for it. It just doesn’t seem as glamorous.

So with all the smaller items down the stairs and loaded, it leaves only the big items such as couches and table and desks. This is about the time the can of gasoline and Zippo really begin to seem like a viable alternative rather than just a joke. It also involves a few decisions. For example, when the couch is lodged in the stairwell and your arm is trapped between it and the wall, should a person go ahead and attempt to pick up his testicles that have fallen to the ground with his free hand, or should he go ahead and dislodge his arm and the couch and pick up the testicles later?

After the initial mishap, I chose to keep them in a peanut butter jar until the move was completed. I wasn’t sure if I needed to poke holes in the top so they could breath, but, as it was, everything turned out just fine. Once I get that big hernia in my side sewn back shut, people probably won’t even be able to notice the trauma I went through.

There were many other brutal details I don’t have time to go into. Suffice it to say, bruises were created, skin was broken, inanimate objects were cursed like they were my worst enemy and my muscles had more aches than an old Replacements ballad. All of the boxes are at the new place now, and they seem so quiet and content I can’t even begin to disturb them yet. I’ll take a few days off, watch a couple of ball games, have a couple of beers and then maybe begin the unpacking. It seems like I’ve done enough damage for a few days.