SHAFTWAXER

I can now officially be “that guy”.

Back in late February, we knew that the people in out house would be moving out sometime after they got back from their vacation as they were closing on their new home the next day. They had said that it might take a week or two to move their stuff. In the end, we were never really given an exact date, but we knew that by early or mid-March, we should be in.

The last Saturday in February was one of our bridal showers. We unloaded all the shit into our apartment, and we had already decided long ago that we were not going to open any of that stuff until it moved into the house. We had way too much shit in the apartment as it was anyway, no need to make it worse. That Sunday, on a whim, we started packing. Still didn’t know when exactly we would be moving, but seeing them loading stuff into their truck over the weekend was a promising sign.

When you are packing like this, you have to navigate a rather fine line. You want to get as much packed so that when it is time to move, you already have made significant progress. At the same time, you don’t want to live in a warehouse full of boxes, especially if you find that you need something that you packed. We did our best over the next couple of days.

Wednesday afternoon rolls around. We had been doing a pretty good job. Lots of the kitchen stuff was packed up, and lots of other random things had been put in boxes and were ready to go. While packing, I was once again reminded of the absolutely insane number of CDs I own. At 3pm, I got the call. They would be out that night by 6 and their cleaning lady would probably be out and done by 9. I sent a page to the woman. She was thrilled. It was finally here. We were going to be able to move into our house. No longer would we drive by it wondering when we would be able to get the fuck out of the apartment, it was OURS.

It was a very good thing that we had started packing when we did, otherwise, with the notice that we received, we would have been looking at a lot of work. We knew that realistically all we needed was kitchen stuff, food, shower stuff, and some clothes. Everything else could come over later. That night we went over and checked it out. We brought along a couple boxes of food, all of our hanging clothes, and a picture from when we got engaged. It was finally our home.

The next day while the woman was off at work, I drove back and forth, loading up my car as much as I could, bringing over everything that I could from the apartment. Only having a 4 mile distance to go really helped. Thursday night, with our skeletal assortment of shit, we spent our first night in the house. Sure, the mattress was on the floor without a box spring, but who cares. The next day the father-in-law helped us with some more of the bigger stuff with his bigger car, and by that night we had most of our electronics set up in the living room. That evening we spent a good amount of time back at the apartment with her brother and his wife, packing as much as we could.

Saturday rolled around and we rented the truck. We had a fantastic crew of people helping us. All of her brothers, my brother, and her father helped us load the rest of the big shit into the truck and unload it into our new home. It took 2 trips, but everything was done in less than 4 hours, and that includes taking a break to eat pizza. It was insane. The second easiest move of my life. Impressive too considering how we were doing this mostly by the seat of our pants. For those who wonder, the easiest move of my life came when we had to move somebody from their apartment on the second floor to an identical apartment on the first flood. Grab some shit, take it downstairs, put it in EXACTLY THE SAME SPOT. Took one afternoon.

We have since managed to get things sorted out, put in their spot, and really make it our own. The cat really seems to like it here, lots of places for her to look outside and even more places an opportunities for her to lay in the sun. It’s funny watching her roll and crawl along the floor as the day goes by and the sun moves. The previous owners had done an extremely good job keeping the place updated. All of the walls are painted really good colors, some maybe not our first choices, but still at the very least contemporary. The only significant thing that we have done was repaint the kitchen a bold darker red. We have been talking about doing that for over a year, it’s nice to finally have it come to fruition.

We are quite happy here, and it did not take long for us to both feel like we had been here forever. It’s rather neat to be able to look around and see where your life is going to be taking place and really feel like it fits. We are fortunate that most of the stuff that we will be doing to the house is stuff we WANT to do, not so much that we NEED to do it.

So there it is. We have a house, and it kicks ass.