A moving story

Every great story starts with someone doing something stupid. That is a fact.

Over the course of Megan and my move I supplied enough stupidity to craft a truly great story. Forged in a fire stoked by fate, and tempered with a liberal dose of irony, what started as a heavy lump of a day weaponized itself and turned on us.

Part I: When you assume...

I raise early on Sunday the 30th of July ready to tackle a linebacker of a task, moving the entirety of my apartment 50 blocks across the city. My dad, Ken, was bringing an empty minivan and flatbed at 1pm so I had the morning free to finish packing, pull my bed apart and recover from the night before. I pulled out my cell to call the building manager of my new place to arrange the key pick-up. ***NOTE: when arranging something as critical as picking up keys, do not wait until the day of to even try and call your contact*** There's no answer from the building managers cell. Unfazed I think to myself, "I have time; I'll just call him again later."

My dad arrives at my place a tad late. If I had stolen the light-up sign from the nearby bank and had it set up in my living room it would have been flashing, "1:35 ... 99 F ... get free checks for a year, start a LaSalle Bank checking acct..." That's right, free checks for a year. And it's 99 F outside. Dew point? 95 F. Even the devil is using a battery powered misting fan. The news recommended that we stay indoors, but necessity dictated that we do heavy lifting outside. I started sweating turning the doorknob to greet my dad.

Megan's brother, Tyler, arrives to help. At this point I'm covered in sweat and reek like a hobo. We have been moving boxes for about fifteen minutes. The wicked twosome becomes an awesome trio and we all reek together in no time.

At 4pm the car is packed and we're headed north in Cubs traffic. For the non-Chicagoans that read this, I'm sure you understand the general concept of Baseball traffic. Now take the baseball traffic that you know and take into account that Wrigley Field, a great old neighborhood park, is right in the middle of a flipping neighborhood. There's barely a parking lot and the only way to get to it is on city streets. Add every asshole from the suburbs getting their first lesson on how to parallel park in traffic in to the equation, and we get a truly special traffic situation. I take the extended break in the car to give the building manager another ring. Again, there is no answer. NOW I start to get a little nervous.

An hour later Tyler, my dad and I are double parked outside the new building, trailer in tow, and I am chain dialing the building manager with "embarrassed panic" spelled out in the wrinkles in my brow. After a few minutes of failure I try other numbers. The building emergency contact number says they'll try and call his cell phone for me... thanks. Megan gets a hold of the real estate company and relays our trouble to them. "Oh, he won't his cell phone today, it's his day off." All I hear is the whirring of a fan and a sloppy -plop- sound.

I ended up sleeping out in the suburbs that night. Total amount of stuff moved into the new place at the end of Sunday: 0%


Part II: So this is what siblings are for...

I wake up early on the 31st hoping to offset a little of yesterday's disaster with efficiency. I get a hold of the building manager who apologizes and blames my blunder yesterday on the real estate company. Yeah, damn them! But as I start to feel optimistic about the day, he ends the conversation with, "I'll meet you here at one." *click*

I pick up Kaitlin and Allison, my two youngest sisters, pulling them out of reserve status and sending them to the front with me. They are going to the Cubs game later that night, so they agreed to lend a hand until game time, and then they'd just cab it to the stadium. My mom is taking the church bus in to the city for the game and plans to rendezvous with them before 7pm to give them their tickets. It's 99 and humid again today. Braced for the heat and the time crunch, the five of us set to task.

My sisters and I arrived at the new apartment complex a little after one and unloaded the entirety of the minivan and flatbed. Megan and her brother were busy getting all of Megan's stuff ready to go by what would end up being a much stretched pickup time. But first we need to get another load from my place.

I think scientists may be able to glean a better understanding of the time-space continuum if they would study the "I only have a little bit left to move" phenomena. Somehow as you think you're about to finish packing up all your stuff you find more stuff. And not just a little bit either, but a grotesque amount. And after you finish packing what you thought was five things into eight full boxes, that is when you realize that you forgot to pack the hall closet.

We headed to Megan’s after finally grabbing everything except for a few items that would be headed to storage in the suburbs. It was about 5pm at this point, way past the 2:30 estimate I had given Megan earlier that day. She and her brother were sitting on the curb surrounded by Megan's things. With my sisters and I wiped from all the hauling we've already done, Megan and Tyler are our second wind. We cram all our crap in, one way or another and prepare to get this whole damned experience over with. As we're finishing up Megan's roomy, Janice, shows up and offers us some constructive criticism on how we might pack up a bit better. I felt so dumb. Why I hadn't I thought of packing things up better? I can be so dense sometimes.

We get to the apartment at about 6:15 to unpack. My sisters catch a cab at 6:30 and Megan, Tyler and I finish the job. I manage an exhausted smile then hurry to the parking lot to move the car and trailer before we get towed. It's about 7:45 by the time we're done and Tyler has to catch the bus home at 8:30. We pile into the minivan and head to Union Station.


Part III: Fate says, "Oh no you di-in't."

This is where the story goes around the corner and goes from being a crappy weekend to something more awful and grand. At some point between driving Tyler to the bus and finding the improbable parking spot big enough for van and trailer I had the following revelation: With my dad now out of town and the rest of my family at the Cubs game I had no way to drop off the van and trailer and get back to the city in time for work at 7am. Megan takes a cab to my place after her bro is on the bus and we ponder the situation over shrimp and garlic bread. We decide to call my mom to see if she can make her way to the old place and take the van back to the burbs instead of the church bus. She agrees to the meet us, and after a $30 cab ride and some light loading I'm ready to bid adios to my ex-home. I take all of the keys I have for the place off my ring and leave them on top of the dryer, lock the knob on the way out and head toward the El with my new roommate, Megan.

Forty minutes later its 11:30 and we're in front of the new place ready to end our long exhausting day. I reach in my pocket, grabbing the keys to unlock the security door. I flip through the ring looking for the diamond shaped key I know unlocks this door, but there is no diamond shaped key on my key ring. I look through the ring again as my stomach begins to twist, but the key is just not there. Now thoroughly twisted, I tie my stomach into a double knot as I realize my mistake. The security key is nearly identical to my old apartment front door key in shape, and in my haste to be rid of the old and embrace the new I had left the new locked inside the old. Despair overwhelmed me and I sat down, defeated. I had no way to get into my old place or the new place. There was no one I could call. I had rendered myself homeless. Megan tried to comfort me, but my self loathing tossed her kind words aside and stood tall. But then she said the magic words, "Wait! You gave me a key!" I had given her a key to my place ages ago and that act of trust paid out big.

Megan and I hop in a taxi and head back to Little Italy to retrieve the security key. Once inside I tested each key until I found the lost one. Clutching it in hand with white knuckles we climb back into the cab and head right back the way we came. $40 later we're back in front the new apartment. It's now 12:30. I test the key and it works. We're almost moved in and we're both ready to collapse. Megan reminds me that our bikes are locked together around the corner and, since she has to bike to work at 3:45am the next day, we needed to bring them inside.

I blame extreme tiredness for this next twist. While reaching into my pocket for the bike keys I somehow drop the loose security key. With no streetlights on the corner Megan and I flip our phones open and start combing the grass with our fingers. I start freaking out a little and head back to the front door to make sure I didn't leave it in the lock. The lock is clean, but Megan is standing with the key in her hand and a smile on her face. We could finally go to bed.


Part IV: Oh yeah, we just moved

We get to the apartment and head to the bedroom. Our bed is in still 4 pieces. We slap the frame together, flip the box spring and mattress on top, sheet it and throw a couple pillows down. As much as we both want to just collapse we realize that lying in the bed as we are now would ruin the most likely ruin the mattress for eternity. We have to shower. After showers are over it's 1:30am. Megan has to wake up in two hours and I have to be up in four. The last piece of the puzzle is an alarm clock to assist with our upcoming wake up times. We rip open box after box and come up empty handed. Our ability to laugh at the situation failed and we got pissed, ripping open boxes and not even looking inside. We decide that cell phones would do it and we hit the pillow, hard.


Part V: Epilogue

Megan and I made it to work on time, but we were crabby. I had given Megan the only set of keys the night before since she would be home before I would. As soon as Megan goes home that day, however, she crashed on the bed and didn't wake up when I called. I was locked out of my new apartment for the second day in a row. My friend Jesse lived a few blocks away so I headed to his place and waited for Megan to see her "you have 172 missed calls" message. Eventually I got in.

The cost of taxis that weekend totaled $110