Sunday, July 08, 2007

Time to move on

If you’ve noticed an increase in the number of thirty year-olds diving into your bushes and hiding under your front porch recently, please don’t be alarmed. It’s only happening because I’ve started asking my friends if they’d be willing to help me move in a couple of weeks. Now that word has started getting around, I’m more likely to bump into Jimmy Hoffa giving Elvis a piggyback ride than I am to have one of my buddies return a phone call. I’m getting the impression that my friends would rather spend my moving weekend hanging out with the tuberculosis guy.

When you’re younger, it’s easy to find people to help you move. Buy a couple of pizzas and a case of beer (preferably the kind of beer that says “premium” somewhere on the can or has “Best” right there in the name so you know that your eight dollars is buying twenty-four cans of a top-notch product), and people will flock to help you. They will do this because beer and pizza is more than fair compensation for their assistance when your first credenza is still ten years off and the largest item you own is a tie-dyed wall tapestry of Che Guevara. When all your earthly possessions fit into five Yaffa blocks, the world is your mover.

But as you get older, some of your Swedish particle-board furniture becomes replaced with furniture that your parents carved from an oak tree in 1972 for their first house, furniture made of wood so heavy that its atoms deserve a new square on the periodic table, perhaps called slippeddiskium.

The unfortunate thing is that the collective increase in the weight of your furniture is met with a corresponding decrease in the health of your friends’ backs. Even at just twenty-nine years old, I’m getting the distinct feeling that the window of using friends to conduct a cheap move is closing rapidly. It’s only a matter of time before a proposition for help with moving will elicit excuses that include the phrase “enlarged prostate.”

I’m particularly dreading moving our guest bed, which is a hand-me-down (of course) from a family friend. The bed is European queen size. You might not know this, but Europeans apparently sew their box springs and mattresses into one enormous rectangle. I’m guessing that they do this so that, if you prefer, you can drop these mattresses on anyone who might be thinking about storming your castle. In any event, I have no idea how Europeans manage to move these huge mattresses around using only Vespa scooters. They must just keep sewing Vespas together until they have an SUV.

The scariest thing about the impending move actually has nothing to do with oak furniture, gargantuan mattresses and slipped disks. We’ve had six months to sell our first house, and while we’ve come heartbreakingly close to unloading it on multiple occasions, we’re soon to be the proud, accidental owners of a weekend house. An empty, sad little weekend house that still needs to have its lawn mowed. At least, for once, our first house has a decent chance of remaining clean for two days straight.

But the good news is that since we’re going to have two houses soon, I’m pretty sure that means we’ll automatically be inducted into high society any moment now. We’ll be real estate moguls, running seminars in shopping malls and getting into fights with Rosie O’ Donnell for no reason. It’s just a matter of time before we start making friends with people who wear yellow sweaters tied jauntily about their shoulders. I’ve never had a friend named Muffy before, so that should be cool. As soon as we officially own two houses, I’m going straight to the store to buy oversized sunglasses and a Chihuahua for my purse.

You can put Mike Todd in storage online at mikectodd@gmail.com.

8 comments:

  1. My excuse for a lack of humour and wit is that it's Sunday and my gray mattter is resting. That being said, I'm very glad to make your aquaintance via Shoo Fly via Hammer via Canada.

    There's only one solution to the problems of moving AND heavy furniture...beg...the louder, the better. If all else fails, offer them an unborn child. Not one of yours, of course, just an unborn child. By the time they figure out that it's a story, they'll be too tired to care and too full of beer and pizza.

    Terrific site, eh.

    Veritas et Fidelis Semper

    P.S. I promise to never say "eh" again.

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  2. Wow, I never knew European Queens were all the same size.

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  3. See how I bring 'em in, Mike? I probably should get a finders' fee.

    You could always just leave all the old stuff and buy new.... you're young enough to pay it off before you die, maybe.

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  4. I just have to many snarky comments about someone named Muffy and you carrying a purse. hehehehe

    I'm gonna stop before I step in the middle of it.

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  5. You need help moving? Well, if it weren't for the miles, my kids and a general achiness in my knees brought on by people asking me to help them move, I'd be there. But. I want you to think on the feeling of needing someone to graciously offer their assistance to you. Really think of how you feel when you ask someone to help you. The optimistic hopefulness of the goodness of mankind.

    That's all I've got. And yes, this comment is completely steeped in foreshadowing, or, depending on how you see it, maybe foreboding. I'll be in touch.

    Funny column as always. :)

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  6. Deborah -- Thanks, ya hoser! Nice to meet you. And I saw all sorts of humor and wit packed into that comment. I was kind of hoping for some maple syrup, though.

    JL -- It's because of the inbreeding.

    melodyann -- You're like a human Blogexplosion. Rock on.

    Burf -- I'm very impressed by your forbearance. Now I have to go look up forbearance to make sure it means what I think it means. OK, I'm back. It does. Word up.

    Janelle -- Can you still see me when I have the covers pulled up like this? Just kidding. You are quite the curiosity piquer. I caught you piquing!

    All -- I won't have an internet connection at home for a while, so if I disappear from the comments section for a bit, that just means I'm trying not to get fired from my real job. Take care of the internet while I'm away.

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  7. Ah-ha! Now there's the true sign that you've grown up: you care about your "real job".

    Good luck with the move. Trust me, once you pass 40, you don't even bother to call your friends any more. They're all on cholesterol medicine or are lactose intolerant and can't EAT pizza any more! LOL

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  8. Dude,

    The real estate market isn't going to improve any time soon.

    Cut the price by a big chunk to move the home instead of doing gradual drops in price which will guarantee that you catch a falling knife.

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