The Norton Anthology Of Poetry, Fourth Edition (Paperback), Is At Least Three Pounds Of Book; You Do The Math

Saturday we pulled up the carpet, packed the last of our remaining things and went to bed so we could be up early enough to greet the movers.

A word about movers: You might think, as I did, that paying young men to move your belongings is a luxury that should be reserved for those who can truly afford it. I'm here to tell you that it is not a luxury, and is well worth it. Our previous move took most of the day and necessitated some creativity on my part trying to figure out where to park a commercial vehicle overnight. We enlisted two friends who didn't deserve what we put them through, and I couldn't see putting anyone else through that again. On a more selfish note, I didn't want to be on the hook for any favors, especially considering our unnecessarily large collection of books, 96 percent of which I couldn't bear to part with, for no particular reason other than I'm enamored with artifacts that don't deserve it.

"Do you cook?" one of the movers asked me at one point. I knew what he was getting at: Jen's collection of cookbooks. "Because this is a lot of books."

Another word about movers: They don't need your "help" unstacking boxes and placing them closer to the door. In spite my help, they had our stuff loaded into their van within 45 minutes max. Every once in a while the head mover would have to get a verbal stipulation that would go like this:

"Excuse me?"

"Yes?"

"This item," he would say, pointing to something entirely crappy and useless, like, say, an IKEA CD case that was handed down to me from Goober, who got it from someone else, "This item is a little . . ." He trailed off, indicating that it was entirely crappy and useless and might fall apart in transit.

"No, it's OK, it's OK," I assured him. I tend to repeat myself when I'm attempting to be "accommodating."

Anyway, these guys moved us entirely into the new place within two hours, including smoke breaks and a circuitous route up the BQE. It was really impressive, and like I said, totally worth it. Nothing broke. I think our tip was reasonable enough, though it's hard to tell at the time.

One cost-saving move that Jen thought might be wise was to have the movers deposit the full breadth of our belongings on the first floor, on the theory that they'd spend less time lugging stuff up the stairs and we'd save some amount of money that in retrospect we probably should have spent. I guess that was our nod to living ninja. We spent the better part of a day or two allocating boxes throughout the house.

And now a word about how much shit you own. It's common knowledge that the volume of a gas is equal to the volume of its container. This law also holds when it comes to stuff you own. Our belongings filled our first apartment (480 square feet) to the gills. Our belongings filled our second apartment (maybe 600 square feet but probably closer to 500 square feet) to the rafters. And now it seemed that our belongings would similarly fill our portion of the house (I think about 1225 square feet).

With gas, the variable is pressure. There's a similar pressure going on with your living arrangements. Characteristics like separate rooms and doors become important. It's all of a piece.

We unpacked enough on Sunday to make our bed. After living over a 24-hour market for nearly six years, that night was the quietest night we'd experienced in some time. We even heard birds in the morning. It was heaven.

On Monday we painted and continued to unpack. Later in the day I decided it was time to stop off at the old apartment to pick up the cable box, return it to Verizon and head back to the apartment to do one final cleaning.

Now I'm a leave-the-campsite-better-than-you-found-it type of guy. And we took care of the apartment while we were in it, but it was way after dinner time and getting late and at some point I was thinking to myself, "What does it matter now if I drain three years of iced condensation in the freezer?" I thought this. I cleaned anyway. I spackled. I swept up as much hair-dust bunnies as I could, which is harder than you think on industrial carpet. I dumped a bag of books on the corner and lingered long enough to watch a few people poke around and took one last look around the neighborhood and the old apartment before I left the keys on a shelf in the kitchen.

And then I went to our new home.

Posted: December 19th, 2011 | Author: Scott | Filed under: The Cult Of Domesticity | Tags: Excellent Quality Movers, I Didn't Really Retain Anything From Chemistry Class, Kawama, Stuff You Retain From Indian Guides, There Is Nothing More Depressing Than IKEA Accessories That Have Been Handed Down More Than Once, You Think You're Living Ninja When In Fact You're Just A Big Pussy

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