Giving thanks for my remaining shred of sanity

Subtitle: Ze pain! Ze PAIN!!!

This weekend, I helped my ailing mother and grandfather move into a lovely rented house high atop a hill. In sum, I:

  • Drove 620 miles (grand total).
  • Drove 250 miles (last night) during the course of eight hours. EIGHT. For a normally FOUR-HOUR trip. Fucking holiday drivers.
  • Slept six hours since Wednesday night. Four of them? Were last night in my own bed. Got home at 1:30 a.m. and still managed to get up to do work at the crack o’dawn.
  • Carried a frillion boxes from our broken-into storage unit (there was next to nothing left) and from the old place into the new. Carried some furniture.
  • Likely lost the ability to have children (see bullet point above). Jesus H, am I sore.
  • Swore about seven million times.
  • Acquired about 30 bruises on my arms and legs.
  • Dragged shit up and down about 400 flights of steps.
  • Learned that three people who are accustomed to being alpha bitches trying to run the show concurrently makes for a really unpleasant four-day odyssey.
  • Ate nine fast-food or carryout meals.
  • Spent approximately $200 feeding helpers and family.
  • Learned that some people will do favors just because you asked.
  • Learned that others will do favors if something is in it for them.
  • Learned that others won’t come through no matter how much you beg and bribe and tap-dance.
  • Wished I had been born a boy so that this physical labor wouldn’t hurt so damn much.
  • Got into a fight with an asshole at Giant Eagle (“Jan Iggle” for the Pittsburgh locals). Was standing in line at the service desk, juggling two cases of water bottles, when some jagoff jumped in front of me as I struggled to get to the desk to take my turn. When he left, I said, “Next time you cut in line, fucker, say ‘excuse me.'” He waited for me in the parking lot to scream at me and follow me to my car.
  • Moved through the ice and snow, only for it to turn 60 degrees yesterday as I was leaving town.
  • Stood in line at SBUX in Bedford, Pa., last night — behind a guy wearing an expensive bomber jacket with a misspelling. It had a John Deere tractor on it and it read, “If Your Stuck in Deep Shit, Call Us.” Fuckin’ classy.
  • Got stared at, drooled on and picked up by a half-dozen men. Shit. (And I looked more like hell than usual.) And here in D.C., nobody looks at me once, let alone twice. Perhaps I’d get back my formerly active dating life if I’d just move back to Pittsburgh, ’cause I neither have the time to meet people nor the looks to attract them here, I suppose. Bah.
  • Got coffee at CoGo’s on top of said lovely mountain — a familiar place to me — when I thought I saw someone I really didn’t want to. So I? Ducked behind a display and opened a little container of half-and-half. Poured the liquid into the garbage and threw the empty little tub into my drink. *sigh*
  • That last one is my favorite. 😉 I’m sure there are more, but Mom has threatened to beat me (when she’s able to move her arms again) if I blog the move. Heh.

    The house is so cute. I’m not embarrassed to pull up to it like I was with the last one. I am scared, though, that the move was too hard on my family — I was terrified to leave them.

    They couldn’t thank me enough, but I told them I was just repaying Mom for that week we spent packing my shit to move from Mount Washington (Pittsburgh) to Virginia. Especially the night my smoked-glass coffee table top shattered into seventy billion pieces on the street at 3 a.m. (damn heat — it burst in my hands as I carried it).

    As we were vacuuming (the street, yes) and sweeping the mess, the cops came — thinking we were on crystal meth and out of our minds. Well, the latter half was true, and they let us carry on. Whee.

    I hate moving. And my own is coming up entirely too soon. …

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