Moves

Three months, five moves, and three buildings later, our new home.

In my last post, I briefly mentioned that we’ve recently moved into a new apartment.  Unfortunately, I was almost completely “off the grid” for the summer months—writing my thesis—so that was news to many of you.  I say that’s especially because it might lead many readers to believe that we, like normal people might, simply decided to “move” (i.e. pack all of our stuff into boxes and then bring those boxes from one place to another place).

Suffice it to say, we’re not all that normal.  As stressful and time-consuming as moving is, that sort of thing would be too easy.  Have you ever lived with a Trevor?  Trevors make things complicated.  Like, excruciatingly complicated.  It’s a built-in feature of the model.

For starters, we decided that before we moved—before we even had a new apartment to move into—we needed to get the hell out of our crappity-crap-crap old one.  Which was crap.

Actually, it was a stroke of fortune that we were able to do so, and to do so in some serious style, despite the complications that came along with the process.  We were really blessed to be found by a couple who needed someone to house sit for the summer, and after a brief interview and tour of the place, they gave us the keys to what would become our wayside-rest of a home.

Now, when I say that we house sat for the summer, I cannot emphasize enough the scope or importance of the word “house.”  This was not some dinky, hyper-efficient, euro-house (though I shouldn’t know those, either, as we have both fallen in love with a couple of in our time here as well); this was a house house.  A people house.  A three and a half story, used to be occupied by seven college students but has since been beautifully renovated, and now functions as a “home” to a beautiful family, house.

Also, there was a backyard with chickens in it.  I shit you not.

So we began the summer with our first move.  We started out as stewards of our new people house by living out of suitcases.  At first, it wasn’t a problem, since Linds was in a state of limbo at various points between Belgium, New York, and Minneapolis, and had become used to living out of suitcases.  (Personally, I’m adept at this minimal style of living, since in high school I used to pack as little clothing as possible for week-long FCCLA trips in order to better accommodate my X-Box, which also came along.)  But as we passed the week mark, my better half started to get antsy.  So we completed another small move from the apartment to the new house.

Then things got interesting.

Really, it was a perfect storm of moving mayhem.  Will, a good friend of ours, made the decision to leave Belgium, and behind with it, all of his furniture.  We, having lived in a dinky pseudo-dwelling for the entire year previous, owned almost no furniture.  To make things simple, Will offered to give us his old furniture, but only if we could get it and store it before he left.  In the intervening days, we found and signed a lease with our new landlord in a new part of town, just three blocks from where our friend’s soon-to-be ex-apartment.

The problem was that our lease on the new place didn’t begin for two and a half more months.  Will was moving out in three days.

Really, there was nothing to be done for it.  So in exchange for a loveseat (which was to be moved), another friend—this one named Chris—and I carried nearly every article of furniture from Will’s place to our new summer house sitting gig—over a mile away.  By foot.  In 90 degree heat.

The upside was that we were mostly moving couches, so whenever we got tired, we just put them down and sat on them.

The rest of the summer passed relatively without incident.  I wrote, we cooked on a real stove, had barbeques, watched TV, had cats (more to come on them at a later date), I wrote some more, tended a garden, and fed chickens through some of the rainiest months I have ever experienced.

Even still, it was a great summer.

But then it came.  The end, and what I had dreaded most—the double move.

You see, we couldn’t fully move out of our old apartment, because between the time our house sitting job ended and the time our new place opened up, there was still one week during which we had to live in our depressingly cruddy dust bin.

So one day we carried our newly acquired furniture a mile back to our soon-to-be new apartment (where our landlord had graciously allowed us to store it)—again, over a mile away.  Three couches.

Then a few days later, we moved back to the aforementioned dust bin, and a week later, moved again—finally—into our current abode.

Of course, we had help from friends (and even some visiting family), without whom I’m not sure we ever would have been finished moving.

And believe it or not, that was the abridged version.