The Professionals
Started: 2012-05-23 08:00:27
Submitted: 2012-05-23 08:35:59
Visibility: World-readable
Sunday, 29 April
Moving day dawned clear and bright. Kiesa went to Lowes for more moving boxes and swung by Starbucks for hot caffeinated beverages for us. We had arranged for professional movers to move the contents of our house, which seemed easier than trying to do it ourselves. (As one reviewer on Yelp noted, we'd passed the age where we could reasonably expect to ply our friends with pizza and beer and expect them to help us move.) The three-man moving crew showed up a little after 09:00 in a large truck, before we'd fully finished packing everything, but we set them to work on the things that could be moved. I left the printer up until the last minute so I could keep printing box labels as I packed. I packed the rest of the garage and watched the movers work. They were impressive: One guy would pick up four small boxes at once, balancing them behind his back with the aid of a cloth strap wrapped around his forehead. They pointed out every flaw in our furniture to remind us that they hadn't damaged them in transit. Most of our furniture has been in our house for a while, and between our cats and Calvin they were in less-than-mint condition.
Our regular Sunday babysitter came for the whole day to keep Calvin occupied and out of our way as we moved. Kiesa started cleaning the rooms as they emptied and picked up pizza for us and the movers around lunchtime. I ran out of things to pack and put a handful of things I wanted to move by myself (including the printer, the rest of my home network, and the fire extinguishers) and headed to the new house. The movers arrived soon afterwards, and I showed them where each of the rooms were (including directional signs pointing them in the right directions at each junction) and they set to work unpacking the truck. (I did wonder what they might think of our obsessive organization, with printed labels featuring box numbers, destination, contents, and a QR code, but the lead mover said that on the move on the previous day they had to open every box when they came in the door so the home owner could tell them where to put it. My system was much better.)
They wrapped up the move late in the afternoon and I settled the bill, tipped them, and they departed. I organized a few quick things in the house and headed back to Monarch, picking up takeout at Noodles on the way, and arrived at our old house to find Kiesa furiously cleaning with stuff scattered around the house that the movers wouldn't move, including a collection of six-foot-tall floor lamps. We ate supper and contemplated our next steps. The stuff we had left to move wouldn't fit in the cars we had, so after I arranged a clever packing scheme for the floor lamps I packed the lamps in Motoko, along with everything else that would fit, and drove to Glendale to drop it off. Night fell as I drove, and I noted that I'd driven through Longmont at many times during the night I was almost always going in the opposite direction: east, toward home, rather than west, toward Boulder.
I returned well after dark, around 20:00, to find Kiesa still cleaning and Calvin on his third or fourth rotation watching the handful of children's DVDs Kiesa had set aside for him. I swept out the garage, set the trash out on the curb (which wouldn't get picked up until Tuesday, but I wanted to make sure the trash got picked up just in case the new owners didn't arrive to set it out in time, since we left it completely full), bid my old house farewell for the last time, and headed back to Boulder with Calvin. We'd lived in the house for more than seven years, longer than any previous owner, almost half of the time the house had stood. It was a good starter house, and I was happy to upgrade.
Calvin fell asleep in the car on the way to Glendale. I carried him upstairs and put him in our bed, the one bed that was actually set up, and scoured the house to try to find some bed to put him on. He had given up on his toddler bed months ago, and had been sleeping on the queen bed in the guest room, but we decided to put that bed in the finished room in the basement and get Calvin to sleep in his own room again. I couldn't find his crib mattress (which ended up in the garage) but I did find the 'yoga mat' spare bed, which I set up, found a functional sheet for, and put Calvin to bed there.
I straightened up the last few things I couldn't live without and sat down to relax after the move. Kiesa arrived eventually, after ten solid hours of cleaning. I was happy to be in our new house and I knew we still had a lot of work to do to make the house livable.
