Moving Daze
Blog entry 10/11 for Saturday and Sunday, Sep 27 & 28.
I have conclusively proven that helping a daughter move and smushing / stubbing / injuring a big toe have a 100% correlation. I’m still working on the causation part, but it may have to remain an unknown. I don’t particularly want to perform any more experiments to tease out the relationship between them.
Last January I was called upon to help Ali and her household (BF and 5 cats) move from an apartment in Mesa to a house in Phoenix. The physical distance wasn’t all that far, but it seemed that the amount of stuff to be moved had grown exponentially since she had moved into the apartment. (I suppose the fact that she and her BF moved from separate apartments into one might have had something to do with it…) In the process of the move, I managed somehow to squish my left big toe with the hand truck I was using. The damage was relatively minor and didn’t even show up for a while – but now, nine months later, I have a black-and-blue line across the toenail at about the halfway mark, indicating how much the nail has grown out since the injury. In another six to nine months, it should be all gone.
Two weeks ago, I was again pressed into service – this time, to move Char and her household (2 cats) from a house to an apartment (both in Tucson). [It was this commitment to move Char that required me to be back from Ali’s birthday trip no later than the 26th.] Ali and Brian came down from Phoenix to help, and we got the vast majority of the move completed on Saturday. I was even able to return the U-Haul trailer after just one day – I had reserved it for two, not knowing how fast the move would go. So that was good.
What was *not* good, however, was the self-inflicted smush I gave to my right big toe. Char has a huge L-shaped couch / sofa / thing that filled up the majority of the living-room area in her house, and it needed to be taken apart to get it out. “Taken apart” in this case meant unhooking the two pieces of the “L” so that each piece could be individually moved. Well, the couch / sofa / thing is heavy, and when I first pulled on it to get it away from the wall, nothing happened. So, naturally, I pulled harder. Also naturally, the couch / sofa / thing suddenly moved, and one of its feet slammed right into my toe, causing great consternation and gnashing of teeth on my part. I was fortunate, I guess, in that nothing bled – or I should say, the skin wasn’t broken so no blood escaped. However, I now have a totally black-and-blue toenail except for right around the edges. It, too, will take about a year to grow out. Joy…
The move itself, other than the smushed toe, went well. With four of us working on it, we got almost everything over to the new apartment on Saturday, and only had the kitchen stuff and some odds and ends to move on Sunday. Ali and Brian were immensely helpful – especially Brian’s help with the larger, heavier, and bulkier stuff, like the verdammt couch / sofa / thing. And the bed. And the entertainment center. And – well, you get the idea.
For dinner on Saturday, the four of us and my ex-wife went to Red Lobster to celebrate Ali’s birthday. Delicious food, of course, and the servers sang “Happy Birthday!” to Ali and gave her a free birthday dessert. The folks at the next table (who were also celebrating a birthday, I think) joined in, and we all ended with a big round of applause. It was a good day. Except for the toe.
My thanks to Ali and Brian for their invaluable help in the move.
The Peripatetic Traveler 
Thanks for b-day dinner!!! And helping me to finish my dessert!!!
No prob to help with the move. I will make a correction, though, on your blog on my move. I moved from the apartment in Mesa at the beginning of February, and Brian and I moved to a house in Mesa, not Phoenix. LOL. And yes, combining two single people into one space does mean that there’s more stuff to move!!! LOL. But thank you for all of your help!!! You rock!!!
I stand – er, sit – corrected. Blame it on a lack of knowledge about the Phoenix metro area. And as for getting the month wrong – they all run together after a while. 😉