The Tory Party

Moving

(This isn’t really interesting or funny, so be warned.)

I hate moving. I`m sure this is a real heart-stopper, considering how many people are like, “Pack up all my earthly crap, beg/grovel/bribe the people who will soon be formerly known as friends to sweat four or five gallons while getting their knuckles crushed, shins banged and discs herniated, drive an hour-and-a-half to do it all over again RAWK ON AWESOME!!!1one!” But now it’s happening to ME, so that makes it relevant and worth discussing.

Moving makes me want to BARF!

For a long time, I handled this issue by not owning anything I couldn’t pick up and move myself. The haughty corollary to this is that I didn’t help anybody else’s ass move, either — unless I was dating them, and note-to-self odds are good whoever you’re dating ain’t gonna be around no more the next time you move. Oh well. I don’t need no stinking help!

If I can’t get this goddamn lampshade to fit, everyone dies.

Then I did something dumb — I acquired big crap, like beds and couches, while adhering to my policy of not helping anybody else’s ass move. Sure, I might show up at the last minute for points (”Wow, it only took you three hours to move all your stuff? Dang.”), but somehow this doesn’t fool anybody.

This time last year, I got my heckling partner to help me move some crap (”OMG it`ll be the funnest and not hard at all! LET`S DEW IT!”), which meant in her case helping me:

• Pick up the truck
• Load the truck
• Lead me an hour-and-a-half in the Jeep
• Unload the truck
• Return the truck
• Drive an hour-and-a-half in the Jeep, whose A/C tends to conk out after 45 minutes, did I mention?

SEPPUKU! Yet not once during this adventure did she plot my death, or at least indicate doing so. This is because she is a better person than me. I accept this.

But moving seems a mighty cruelty to foist upon someone you, you know, like and don’t wish to come to harm. So for this move — the big one — I actually went nuts and compared options — like having professional-type people load and drive the truck and stuff. I should have gotten a big red flag when I first noticed that none of the traditional comparison-shop sites will actually give you a side-by-side comparison of the various moving options? (Okay, I didn’t dig that deep, so if you do one Google and find www.compare-moving-options-no-kidding-not-a-portal.com, feel free to provide it and embarrass me.) So after some research and a lot of free quote forms, I learned the following:

(I`m moving a two-bedroom house worth of crap — need about a 15` truck, 5000 - 6000 lbs [?! -seems like a lot] — and I`m going only like 81 miles.)

Approximately how much crap I have
(Incidentally, I went to high school with a McKesson, but that’s another story.)

• Two Men and a Truck, while seeming very cool, gave me a quote of $1200 - $1400. This was my first sticker shock, because you are high as a kite high as I might I can’t get that high if you think I`m dropping over a thousand dollars on this mess.
• PODs (or UPack, or any other deal where they bring a crate to your house) only handles out -of-state moves or moves over 100 miles. I lied to moveAmerica’s form and told them I was moving to Charlotte, just to see if this method was worth pursuing at all, and it gave me an estimate of $955. Bwa ha ha ha. Hell, no. I would sooner spend $955 on Jack Daniels and drunken master all my crap.
• Rent a Penske truck? I like their website enough — but a 14-footer starts at $469. I would think this was a normal truck rental price, but I rented a Budget truck last time and had a perfectly satisfactory experience and I know damn well it wasn’t $469. The online forms told me futz with my move dates (try the middle of the month or the middle of the week, when demand is lower) but it didn’t make a damn bit of difference.
• Budget truck, 16` — $120 plus a refundable $100 deposit. Ahh. That’s more like it.
• (FWIW, U-Haul is somewhere between — like $200. Heh heh — how `bout U haul my ass to Budget so I can save some money?)

So I’ve got the truck. It has a ramp, and I`m considering just getting a furniture dolly under the ass end of my damn sleeper couch and moving this crap myself. But then I think, I did budget a certain amount — why don’t I rope someone into helping me and give that amount to them? And that’s probably what I`ll do. Because the third time your fingers get crushed into a doorway, you need a tidge more incentive than warm feelings for your fellow man.

“Honey, I told you to put bubble wrap…”
“Just say it — just say one more word to me, you ivory bitch.”