I TOLD you, my baby beat me up

I have been saying for a while now that my jetsetting lifestyle was going to catch up to me and I was headed for a fiery crash into reality sooner or later. This weekend was my fiery crash. I think up till now I have been handling pretty well the schedule of work, school, and more work that keeps me going nonstop between the hours of 7AM and 11PM, but usually I at least have the weekends to relax and unwind a little. Add to that an apartment move and wedding planning assistance and apparently you throw me over the edge and into the sobbing mass of bruised flesh I have become.

I've been slowly moving my stuff out of my old place over the last week, and this weekend I had hired movers to take all my heavy furniture from Sunnyvale to San Jose. I didn't want any of my friends and family to have to move crap down one two two flights of stairs and up two flights of stairs, since they've all been through it before. So I figured $140 was a small price to pay for not breaking anyone's backs. Saturday morning I got up at 7:30 to get ready and go get Mark's truck to move the little stuff while the movers took the big stuff. I had Luis to help for that, but since it was only going to be little items, I had refused everyone else's offers of help to spare them. I rushed back home because I was late, only to find that the movers had not arrived by 9:05. No big deal, they were only five minutes late. By 9:15 I began to worry that the "Professional Moving Service" I had found at bargain rates on Craigslist might have been a poor choice. And not calling to confirm they were coming the day before might have been a second bad move. So I called the number on the ad and was greeted on the fifth ring by an incredibly homosexual-sounding male voice that might have just been roused from sleep, or interrupted during fellation. The guy could barely speak English and I couldn't really make him understand that I was calling because I wanted my furniture moved and no one had come to do it. He said he would call me back and hung up on me without getting my number. I wanted to reach through the phone and strangle him, but instead, Luis called him back and was able to communicate what had happened and what was going to happen. Turns out the man I had spoken to the week before took my number down wrong and was unable to reach me when he called to confirm, therefore he just sent no one. They offered to reschedule for the next weekend, and said they would call me back to see if it was at all possible to do the move later that Saturday. I don't handle setbacks well and was in the midst of a full on tantrum when Luis said we should just move the stuff ourselves since we had a truck. I did not want to do this, but there wasn't much else we could do unless I just moved everything back a week. I called Laura and she brought over another truck and we began lifting and moving like our lives depended on it.

Hours and hours and numerous scrapes and bruises later, we had taken the last load of furniture over to the new place. From this experience I have learned many things: ALWAYS call to confirm when you are scheduling movers. Three people does not constitute a moving team. Bungee drawers on your dressers. Don't trust someone with a TV on his back to lower it carefully into your waiting arms. Sofa beds are very heavy. If you tell your friends who have been kind enough to help you move your worldly possessions up and down several flights of stairs that you accidentally left the elevator key in your car when you exchanged vehicles to move, don't let them in on the fact that your key was in your purse the whole time when you find it after the very last item is carried up to the third floor. They get mad.

Now all I have left are some small things at home which I have been moving stealthily in the night. I still have a ton of shit to unpack, but after barely being able to lift my arms to hang up the 6 garbage bags full of clothes I brought up yesterday, I think I deserve a break. My legs look like someone took a tiny baseball bat to them and took out years of aggression in the form of repeated assaults, and my arms are covered with lumps and angry purple bruises. Laura and Luis suffered the same injuries, and I feel horrible that I subjected them to that. But I am extremely grateful because I could never have done it on my own, and I have promised to repay both of them with dinners and homemade desserts. And hopefully, I won't have to do this all over again in a couple months. But if I do, you can bet your ass that this time I will just be renting a Uhaul and going down to the Home Depot with a case of beer and a fistful of twenties.