A Moving Experience

 If there is anything worse than moving yourself, it has to be helping someone else move. You understand and accept why you must move- reasons- and you go about the annoying, backbreaking task as you can afford. It is always best to pay professional movers to do the deed, but that is often not affordable, and you have to wing it. It is nice to have a friend or family member with a truck. I am that friend or family member, because I'm a truck guy. There's a lot to be said for being a Kia guy though when these moving situations arise. You can just 🤷 and say, "Sorry, I just have a Kia. How about Joey Bagadonuts? You know him? He's got a Ford F150. He works cheap". But nobody works cheaper than family. 

Cousin Bobby is a little lost these days. I think he quit his job a few months after I came to town, after he came down with a case of the fuckits. He was pushing 60 and just tired of working for a living. Aren't we all? Well, I have ten years on my younger cousin, and though legit retired, I sometimes miss working. I've got a month left on my age joke about how "I'm 68- you do me now and I'll owe you one". Next month I'll be forced to actually reciprocate. But only for a year. 

ANYWAYS, a guy my age who also smokes, shouldn't easily be outworking a guy ten years younger. But I did. Bobby has had his share of medical issues as he has aged, but still... A bigger factor, I think, was that when I show up to help at 10:30 in the am, he'd be in his garage chair, drinking a beer. I was pretty sure it wasn't his first one of the day. When you add alcohol to the fuckits, it's never conducive to getting the job done well. I don't judge (much...) and I don't complain (enough...) and I wasn't ramrodding this show, so I just rolled with it. I was not going to hurt myself on this mission anyway and he wasn't falling down drunk as he's a pretty accomplished drinker. It is how some guys fuel themselves. I'm just not one of them. 

Everybody over the age of forty, needs to downsize whether they own a home or rent. I promise you that you've got too much shit you don't need. I know I do and I'm the guy preaching downsizing. So, listen to my voice of experience! My mom passed at 93 years of age, a couple years ago, and me being of the muscle end of the family, I did all the heavy lifting for the most part. In 93 years, a mom is going to acquire a lot of stuff, and each item is important to her no matter how redundant. I totally get that. I actually support it too. At that age, they have to be the one to make the downsizing decisions. They know they aren't going to live for forever. They also know that they won't have to move the shit. That's what they raised strong kids for! 

Now, I'm pretty sure that I was one of the umpteen people that told Bobby many months ago that now was the time to be getting rid of stuff. Being unemployed, he knew that losing his house was on the horizon. I gather he did sell some things for beer money over that period. He was trying to sell stuff up to the last minute. I was happy to see that big stuff like couches were long gone already. Though I had been to Bobby's house many times, our activity was Cubs games either in the garage or the backyard, on the radio. (He's one of those annoying purists who think baseball should be heard, not seen. Fuck that. He probably learned how to shoot pool on the radio too.) But I digress. This town, being rural, allows burn piles as long as conditions aren't too dry or windy. I like that. We put some things aside for the fire, but some I looked at and noted, "This would burn good!" and he'd say it was a keeper and he had a mind to sand it and revarnish and other things we all know weren't going to ever happen. Eh, it's his call, but I would have burned a lot more. The guy had jugs he's collected for years. And old-timey lanterns. I might have mentioned I don't judge, but I thought it was a good time to part with stuff that really didn't need to be stored- or moved again. One man's trash is another man's treasure. I don't make the rules. 

Mind you, all his worldly goods were going to a storage facility in town, so this just meant loading up my truck several times and driving about a mile or so to unload. He's had the unit for years and hasn't paid in years for it either. Not sure what's going on with that, but no one seems to care. There was a unit on the other side of the facility with a broken overhead door, with junk spilling out of it that had been that way for three years. Pretty obvious that no one cared. About the time we got the last bit of junk jammed into the unit, he turns to me and said, "Ya know, next time I move this, I'm hiring movers! Fuck this shit!" You're goddamned right you are hiring movers, I thought to myself, but actually said, "That's a good idea!" I had been dropping hints about that for days. We did the right thing for simply moving stuff in town, but I for one will be busy (or dead) when he needs to move his stuff about an hour south, once he finds work and a new place to live. The plan now is to stay with his ex-girlfriend and her son, whom Bobby raised as his own from an early age. The ex is a sturdy, hard-working, mean-business woman. Neither of them is at all interested in rekindling a long-ago love. I've only met her once and I know he better get his shit together real-quick. Oh, yeah. 

My cousins- his siblings- regard me as a Saint for all I did in helping him move. Being pretty introverted, I don't seek compliments and laurels, and I actually get kind of embarrassed by them. I found out over the weekend that I was actually his last choice for this moving experience. Like, the very last. He's a great guy who has a lot of friends and a big family, but those friends and family were well aware of his drinking and dallying habits. He could wait until the last minute, but they couldn't. They tried to tell him, as I had, to start working on this months ago. And they are sorry I had to do it, but I was literally his last and only hope. Understandably, they are quite fed up with him. I'm a reluctant hero, but somebody had to be. I want to say, "Fuck me for being retired" but I didn't really have anything else to do and no viable, built-in excuses. It wasn't all that bad or hard, but yeah, I'm glad it's over. Nothing personal, but it won't happen again.