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Helping Relatives Move
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Grrrrrr.
"It'll be quick, it's just one car load." My butt. I lost an entire Sunday to that "one car load". Never again. Never never never. -- Bob --------- The Internet Is For Norns. 
I know that feeling.
I got conned into helping a friend of my Mum move a bunch of stuff into storage several months back. I ended up being the only guy 'helping' not to mention I was the youngest person involved (at 33), guess who ended up doing most of the heavy lifting. *grumble* Also, while my Mum's friend is a nice woman, her organizational skills leave something to be desired.__________________ I bet that if you cooked an elephant, you'd have a lot of leftovers. ___________________________ "I've always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more specific." - George Carlin
Last time there was moving to do, I ended up being the elephant for the 47" _tube_ television in the nice 4 foot tall oak cabinet, good times.
Next time, I'm bringing a back support belt, and requiring there to be water on hand, since I have no problem helping my family out, even if they can be stupid disorganized idiots.Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979
At least 3 and 1/4 full sized truck loads.
Early last fall a cousin,my brother and I were asked to move our aunt and uncle's "batching" outfit home from a Missouri ONE ROOM church parsonage. At my mothers insistance and in spite of our Aunt claiming all they had was a "batching" outfit we took two full sized trucks and a 20 foot trailer and decided not to take the third truck after all how much can you get into 1 room? It took us 4 hours(got lost in part of the Mark Twain national forest) to reach the Missouri church and then another 3 hours to load and strap down the 8 foot tall mounds we had to pack on the trailer and 2 trucks. (Duct tape and lots of nylon string.) We still had stuff left over and we ended up driving home with the truck cab packed nearly solid around us with most of the extra stuff. We arrived at our Aunt and Uncle's house after a 3 hour drive and had just unpacked ourselves from the cab and crawled out when my Aunt drives up and informs us she needed us to unpack and set up the couch, love seat, a bed, a dressers and 2 chest in her house along with carrying in everything else. When that day was done the three of use were promising ourselve and each other that it was going to take shotguns to get us to move anymore of our relatives anytime soon. howard melton God bless
Once upon a time my Brother was moving from Montreal to Ottawa. So my father and I got in his Minivan to spend a few days driving up there to help him out, you know a sort of mini-vacation and family bonding thing.
Things... did not turn out well. My brother was stuck in Ottawa at the time so Dad and I had to do the job ourselves. Brother had insisted he had packed and cleaned head of time. He lied. He lied so much. My brother is a slob. In an effort to redeem his security deposit we had to clean the place up. We spent the better part of TWO DAYS doing this. I drew the short straw and got the bathroom. A word of warning, if you ever want to be able to respect a man do NOT clean his bathroom. You will discover things about him that are best left unknown. My god that place was a mess. We had to buy fill for the (numerous) holes in the walls. We had to rent a wetvac to get the peaunt butter stains out of the carpet. And we had to pack up everything. At least, that which we didn't just throw out. Worse yet, we had to make two trips. Two trips. From Ottawa to Montreal and back. For one bachelor apartment! (I blame the inborn Peori ability to pack far too much into far too little space). On the plus side, I got his big screen TV out of the deal. But never again... ------------------ Epsilon
*Looks at all the grim accounts*
Wow... I almost feel bad that when I helped my lil' brother move past Saturday, it was well planned out, went perfectly, and was done in a single afternoon. (Edit: Typing errors)
Y'know, I don't actually *have* any 'moving the relatives' horror stories. Odd, considering that I've had one hotel bombed, another with a meth lab in the next room, had a high-tension power line fall *almost* on me on the road... but I digress.
I do have a minor one about moving my own family, though, about 15 years ago now. My father is great at Getting Things Done, but not at GTD in any kind of organized fashion. He substitutes elbow grease and sweat for planning, and in general it works. But when we were moving out of our previous house, and *had* to be out by midnight on M-Day... there was a little problem. Basically, Dad used to auto-body repair work out of the garage as a sideline. Show-floor quality work, too -- people *raved* about his paint jobs and body restorations. It's b/c he's a rabid perfectionist when it comes to his own work. Unfortunately, that also means that it takes *time,* and he had a more-than-40hrs day job to do too. So, we've been moving for weeks -- small loads of nonessential stuff in the pickup, me and Dad doing the house>truck>house heavy lifitng, Mom and my sisters doing all the un/packing. By late afternoon on M-Day, the house is *stripped*... but there's still a customer car left in the garage, needing its final paint, buff, and polish. Plus all the gear you need to fully paint and resurface an automobile. My car was gone with my mother. Dad and I had the pickup and the customer vehicle. The "plan" was to finish the customer vehicle, load all the remaining gear (including the *big* air compressor) into the truck, and convoy the 35+ miles to the new house (good thing we weren't moving too far), all before midnight. I ended up crashing on the carpet in the house, the only "furnishing" left. Around 1AM or so, Dad shakes me awake, looking even worse than I felt, and we start loading the truck. We're already well past our midnight deadline, but hey, it's not like the new owners are going to show up before daybreak. I haven't seen a compact pickup truck so overloaded since the last time I was in Mexico. But there was no way to make two trips, we were both past our last legs and onto our last fingertips, and hey, we could drive slow -- we were going to take the back roads, for obvious reasons. Problem is, Dad's been going for 30hrs+ w/o any sleep at this point, he's driving the customer vehicle behind me, I'm doing maybe 35-40mph, and we're in severe danger of wrecking the customer's new paint job (and a lot more) due to Driving While Zombie. Things actually worked out, though. Mom dragged the girls out of bed and came looking for us, and found our little convoy weaving down the road about halfway along. She stuck chatterbox-sis with Dad with instructions to not let him fall asleep, and took over convoy duties to let Dad get back up to reasonable speeds and get home before he zoned out. Me, I just kept on truckin' until we finally got home and used a crowbar to pry my fingers off the steering wheel. If I ever have to move myself, I'm going to hire a service or something. |
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