Moving…

The day dawned dreamily into cool Carolina blue skies.  No clouds, high 60’s, damp with dew.  As I wandered through the house coffee in hand on my way to glance out the door at the day I passed my brother in law.  It was moving day for him and he was carrying some last minute thing out to one of the vehicles.  I nod and then he nods.  No words are exchanged.  It’s morning, it’s quiet.   I follow him out onto the porch and breathe in the scent of the surrounding trees with just the right mix of fresh coffee.

Brother in Law and Tigerlily spent most of last evening loading vehicles with things from my shop which was pressed into duty as temporary storage when they arrived back in May.  Let me add that I DID help them for a while but gave in to the heat and let them finish solo… err duo..  Regardless, this morning most everything is loaded and ready to go. 

There was my truck and 12 foot trailer loaded with boxes and couches and hutches and the bane of my existence… in fact… the thing that I consider the most horrendous thing that I have ever had to move.  Which is quite an accomplishment because I have moved a LOT of stuff.

*** QUE Horror move “scary scene” music*** 

EEEK EEEEEK EEEEEK

Evil Over and Under Washer and Dryer of Death

This is a random picture gleaned from the internet.  I had absolutely no inclination to take a picture of my arch nemesis.

Let me repeat.  This is the most evil appliance on the face of the earth.  It is horrendous.  Not only is it obscenely expensive (most run about $1200.00 apparently) it is also (in my own words) “stupidly heavy”.   It is impossible to relate how “stupidly heavy” it really is.  Impossible.  The laws of physics do not apply to this appliance.  It has it’s own gravity field and will, in fact, attract small birds that approach too closely.  This thing doesn’t lose socks like a normal washer or dryer it compresses them in a massive gravitational field into tiny points of light which then appear before your eyes when you try to lift it.. 

My first battle with the beast was when they first arrived.  Things were packed neatly into the various boxes of average “moving box” weight.  These are easily hefted by men folk while women folk are off doing whatever it is they do while we sweat with moving boxes.  The boxes were the ones that real people use, not the uniformly sized ones from the moving suppliers but the wildly variable sort that come out the back of your local “Big Box” store.  None the less, they were well packed so as we passed boxes with leprechauns and Quakers on them to one another we only occasionally had to warn each other about a “heavy” box. 

As we went in and out of the truck I saw it sitting there near the back and, honestly, it looked friendly enough.  My brother in law just said, “let’s leave that for last” and not having a reason to argue I nodded and tossed him a box labeled as both “KRAFT” and “underwear”. 

Things went as things go when moving.  In and out chugging along and making steady progress until it was just me and “it” left in the truck.  Knowing that this was next and without missing a beat I gave the Over and Under Washer and Dryer of Death a quick shove to center it up in the truck so that we could quickly throw it on a dolly and wheel it into the shop.

It pushed back.  I raised an eyebrow and, gave it a powerful shove which, nearly knocked me out of the truck as the washing machine remained stationary (Damn Newton and his laws anyway).

I expressed my surprise (saying something along the lines of “Holy Shit!”) and then settled down into the challenge that it had issued.  I wedged a knee behind the thing, put my back against the side of the U-Haul and PUSHEEEDDD.  I was rewarded by movement of a few inches so reset, got a better grip and pushed again.  With a loud SCRRreeeeeeeeee the machine slid across the metal floor of the truck. 

We got a dolly under it and began the long move from the truck to the shop.  All of about 12 feet. First it wouldn’t center properly on the dolly which caused it to tilt and threaten to crush things (namely me) and to avoid rolling straight.  We wrangled it down the ramp one inch at a time with me sweating and kicking it back into alignment and swearing vehemently (which helped move it along more than my other tactics).  Brother in Law, I later learned, doesn’t swear which is commendable but useless in situations like this.

We discovered too late that the machine of death was too tall to fit through the door properly while on the dolly and spent a few horrible minutes wrenching and wrestling the dolly out from under the thing.  As soon as it was free the dolly scampered to the front of the truck, curled up and cried.  I badly wanted to join it, crying and all, but we only had a few more inches to go.

We stood there with the base near the bottom of the ramp and the top resting on my Brother in Law.  I climbed up behind the machine and made ready to lift.  Now, let’s be clear, I aint no tough guy.  I’m not likely to pick up a car without a jack or, really, to even try.  But, that said, I’ve worked (sometimes hard) my whole life and have, on several occasions been trained to lift things properly.  You know, from the knees and all that jive.

I get my feet spread evenly, get a good grip and lift steadily (no jerking), I apply more strength to the task… and then more… my left knee feels the pressure as does my hip.  The machine slowly… slowly… lifts from the ground.  My upper lip starts that involuntary twitch that is your body’s way of telling you that you are very close to crossing the line between “inadvisable” and “you moron!”.  

Through gritted teeth I grind out a squeaky (but manly) “push!”.  He does.  It moves.  I drop it.  We’ve moved the machine a good six inches.  I reset and we repeat this process twice more which gets the washing machine far enough into the shop to stand it up properly.   We both stand gasping for breath (me more than him) for a few minutes and then close up the shop and the truck before going inside.  Neither of us mention it again.

Today, we reversed that process and moved it again.  This time I gave him the heavy end because, well hell, it’s his and I guess I’m not as good a person at heart as I want to be. His only comment was “Ok, Now I see what you were crying about”.  Nice guy my Brother in Law.

  I don’t want to talk about the rest.

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