Nearly Unmoved: In Which Superman Fails to Help

How do you move a six-thousand pound car that’s split into several large pieces and has no wheels?

A.  Put it back together

B.  The murder weapon was a giant icicle

C.  It represents mankind

D.  To get to the other side!

E.  A lot of hamburgers

If you selected choice E, you’re correct, and yet likely still confused.  

This story begins almost seven years ago.  I was a senior in college and becoming essentially too cool for school, insofar as I was dating a very sophisticated older man with a job.  That sophisticated older man is, of course, the gent you know as Husband.  And that man had meaningful disposable income for the first time in his life.

I’m not one to begrudge someone a few indulgent purchases upon entry to the real world and the drudgery of work - I myself made some pretty ridiculous purchases upon law school graduation.  So when Husband bought stuff like a backyard hammock complete with stand, or $250 cowboy boots (? seriously, ?), I didn’t say anything. 

But then he bought the Buick.

To be precise, he bought a 1956 Buick with enormous fins, an airplane hood decoration, and such serious rust damage that you could watch the asphalt rush by underneath your feet as you drove it.  It literally had holes in the floor.  Like a Flintstones car.  Seriously.

It wasn’t going to be the first car he had restored; he’d restored an old mustang in high school.  But I was still skeptical when Husband brought the Buick back to the house that he was then sharing with two other dudes (before the mold was known).  I had questions.

Liz:  I mean, how long is it going to take you to finish restoring this car?

Husband:  I don’t know, like a few years probably.

Liz:  A few YEARS?  Are you kidding me?  That’s forever!

Husband:  No more than four, I mean.

Liz:  FOUR YEARS?!?!?

Flash forward to six years later.  The Buick was not done.  The Buick was not only not done, it was not, in any meaningful sense, ASSEMBLED.  I had unwittingly enabled this state of being when I helped husband build two work benches.  He used those work benches to set the body of the car on after he removed the body from the frame.  I had never personally realized that you could take the body of a car off the frame, but you can, and I was reminded of this afresh whenever I went to the garage to do laundry and rammed my arm into a tailpipe hovering five feet in the air. 

THAT state of being had been achieved by bribing fifteen of our friends to come over and pick the body up off the frame and move it six feet to the left on to the tables.  The bribe had been a barbeque.  

This strategy had evidently worked not wisely but too well, because now, when it came time to move the entirety of the vehicle, Husband was of the opinion that all we needed was our friends to pick it up.

To move an entire two thousand pound car, which notably did not have wheels attached to it in any sense whatsoever.

I thought we should rent a crane, or commission an army of sherpas, or perhaps sell the entire vehicle piecemeal on Craigslist before we moved.  But apparently none of that was an option.

Husband sent out an e-mail to literally everyone we know who still lives in the area, and some who (as husband knows perfectly well) live several time zones away.  In exchange for helping to dead lift an entire automobile, carry it onto an auto trailer, carry it off an auto trailer, and up a driveway into a garage, we offered... burgers.  Including veggie burgers for those inclined.

I did not think that was a particular attractive option.  I thought we would have no takers.

But our friends are all spectacularly giving and wonderful people - so much so that I felt even worse about how we were abusing them.  When the appointed day came, we had around 20 people show up to lift.  

The first task was to back the car trailer onto the driveway in a suitable fashion.  I did not think that was an achievable goal: it was a 20 foot long trailer, the wheels of which were nto controlled by a steeing wheel, and the only way to back it was by pushing it with the car it was attached to.

Husband assured me that he was "good at backing things up."  I gave him a look that attempted to convey my lack of certainty that that was a thing.  At all.  That anyone was good at.  

But it turns out even after seven years in a relationship with someone, he can still surprise you.  It turns out that Husband is actually really good at backing things up.  He navigated that trailer backwards into the driveway perfectly.  It was truly impressive.  Everyone applauded.

We then crammed everyone into the garage as best as possible and tried to figure out how to lift something that was designed to be picked up only by tow trucks and machinery in factories.

"Okay, let's get enough people on each side."

"But we need someone to direct!"

"Okay, Jam can direct and guide, and everyone else lift on one side."

"We need someone on the back!"

"Two people on the back.  The rest lift."

"Do we have any more gloves?"

"No, but use these rags?"

"Do we have any more rags?"

"Well, here's a shirt of Husband's that I don't like anymore, no, it has holes in it, stop looking at me like that."

"Okay, does everyone have gloves, or a rag, or a shirt?"

"Let's lift on three."

"Lift on three, or lift on one-two-three THEN lift?"

"One-two-three lift."

"Should we do a practice lift?"

"No.  It's time to lift.  Jam?"

"Ready everyone?  Here we go - One.  Two.  Three.  LIFT!"

It's now that I should mention that our garage wasn't exactly spacious: there was the frame of the car, the washer and dryer, Husband's workbench, a bunch of boxes, etc.  So the grunting and narrative shouting that ensued as 22 people tried to move in concert while carrying the heaviest thing imaginable was NOTEWORTHY.  

Spectacular, in fact.

By which I mean we caused a spectacle in the neighborhood.  The neighbors - many of whom we still had never met - all came out of the house to stare as we awkwardly waddled this car onto the trailer. 

Then it was merely a simple task of driving the trailer to the new house and unloading it into the new garage.  And that couldn't be any harder than getting out, right?  

One, two, three, lift, carry up the driveway, lift to set on the work tables and...

Husband:  "Uh, okay, everyone set it back down on the driveway."

The work tables that had been the right height for the car body to fit in the old garage were not the right height for the new garage, which we discovered was in fact shorter than the old garage.

When Husband and some other individuals broke out the saw to start cutting the tables down, I gave up and started getting the burgers ready.

We eventually did get the car lifted and into the garage, and we did get the burgers on the grill, and we MAY get our friends to forgive us someday.  But I told Husband that if we move again, either the car drives to the new place or it doesn't go at all.  We don't have enough friends to get an entirely separate batch to lift the car again.

We did find one upside the next day to having a giant auto trailer at our disposal, though:

Not Unmoved: A Tale of Packing

When I was in college, I moved every.  Single.  Year.  It was no mean feat, either - when I first rolled up to college, I did so in a uHaul packed with my possessions.  I overheard whispers of awe as I hauled all of my dorm necessities up the stairs.*  And everything when back down the stairs nine months later and into a storage bin, out of which it came three months later, up a different set of stairs, and so on.  I lived in a different dorm all four years of college.  I thought it was a luxury when I lived in one of those dorms for 12 straight months rather than 9.

Of course, after college, due to a specific confluence of circumstances I ended up moving everything out, back to my childhood home a thousand miles away, and then back to the exact same school again three months later.  If I ever want to plead insanity, I will have plenty of people to testify that I actually did this.  

Twelve months later, I moved again.  

So in five years of my life, I had moved all of my earthly possessions a total of nine times while stubbornly refusing to reduce the quantity of said possessions.  Despite the moving.  Despite unsolicited suggestions as to the appropriate quantity of shoes required for existence as a student.  Despite the trauma to certain groomsmen called upon to move my couch while still recovering from and dressed for our nuptial celebrations.

After that ninth time of moving, I was of the opinion that moving could SHUT UP.

Fortunately, that last time was moving in with Husband after our wedding.  We successfully snookered various members of the bridal party into doing at least the final heavy lifting while we were on our honeymoon in Hawaii.  (Apparently we have a habit of going to Hawaii during housing transitions.)

And then we didn't move again for a long time - five glorious years of no moving.  But we bought our house!  Which was very exciting!  Until the initial elation faded and we realized what it meant.

We had to move.  Again.  And moving makes your place look like this:

As Husband can attest, I don't even like packing for a short trip.  It's one of my least favorite activities.  I did not greet the task of packing our entire life up with tremendous enthusiasm.  SOME person I MAY OR MAY NOT be married to may have described my demeanor as "sulky."  Perhaps it was: starting to move required confronting three very serious things I had henceforth largely been able to ignore:

1.  The exponential increase in stuff-accumulation that happens the longer you don't move

2.  The mold

3.  The entirely disassembled elderly vehicle in our garage.

Point the First:  Stuff Accumulation

I have modeled below the Liz Functional Theorem of Stuff Accumulation:

Current stuff = ((starting amount of stuff + major gift-receiving life events) * number of closets) ^ (years in residence)

In our case, the theorem proved chillingly accurate.  (OK, I can't really quantify it, but close enough.)  Neither Husband nor I are particularly inclined to throw things away.  We have "reference" files full of papers that include his resume as of his senior year of high school, or a job offer I got for a summer internship halfway through college.  We have a full costume box.  We have a selection of sheets for XL-twin beds that haven't fit any bed since we left behind the crappy dorm ones.  I have enough bottles of half-used hair products that, if dumped into the bathtub, could drown small rodents.  

When you move, you at least confront the more egregious items that need to go.  The shirt that is really affirmatively torn.  The box of cards received on your last birthday.  The pens that are out of ink.

I wasn't used to having stayed in the same place for five whole years AND having had the use of all the closets in the house.  So when we started packing, I started finding some next-level crazy stuff:

•  A bunch of broken vases.  
• A plastic box containing:  

1. an empty box sunglasses had some in; 
2. a pink feather boa; 
3. a bunch of save-the-dates for our wedding; 
4. a fanny pack; 
5. a worn-out black leather belt.

• Twelve billion wire hangers

When did I decide that was an important selection of items to store together in the guest room closet?  

The most notable find was my dried-out wedding bouquet:

Which led to this inconclusive** text message exchange with Sassy:

Point the Second:  The Mold

We knew our house had mold.  You can't get a house for cheap rent in a VSREM just on good looks.  We also knew from the fact that for a long time, whenever it rained, the roof would leak and one of the walls would actually swell up with water and be kind of squishy if you poked it.  The landlord eventually repaired the roof, but our battle with mold had been ongoing.  We scrubbed the walls with bleach frequently.  We once painted a couple walls with mold-resistant primer stuff.  None of it seemed to do much good -- the house was damp and poorly insulated and it kept coming back.

We just hadn't realized how much. 

When you take the furniture out of rooms, the room looks pretty sad:

But when you take furniture out of rooms and find a ton of mold, that makes YOU look pretty sad.

Husband sprang into action.  He was DONE with mold and did not want to bring a single spore of it to our new home.  So... amazingly... we actually threw a lot of stuff away.  If we felt it was too mold-contaminated, in the trash it went.  All of the furnitures was thoroughly scrubbed and left outside on bright sunny days to kill the mold.  Items that had been in the room with the worst mold were cleaned and then sealed in airtight ziploc bags for a period of no less than two months.  We were zealous.

Friend:  "Your new house smells a lot ... fresher? than your old one?"

Husband:  nods knowingly

The rest of the move was fairly standard, with only the minor glitch when my mom and decided we absolutely needed to remove gross shelf paper from the shelved in the new house before we could put anything in that closet, so that had to happen immediately for obvious reasons:

There was also the issue that Husband really didn't want to move our old TV because it is ridiculously big and heavy.  It has a giant screen but is NOT a giant flat screen - it's an old projection TV and thus weighs twelve million pounds.  Husband, sensibly, wanted to sell the TV on Craigslist before we moved a buy a new one.  I, stubbornly, did not want to admit I had already bought Husband a new TV for his upcoming birthday.  The TV got moved.  

Astute readers will have noticed I never reached Point the Third:  Enormous Disassembled Elderly Automobile.  That's another story for another day, bien sur.  You will stay tuned, non, mes petits cheres?

* In justification of taking a uHaul to college: I was moving from a state without sales tax to a state with ridiculous sales tax!  I had attempted to buy everything I would ever need for the rest of my life before I left.  

** I currently cannot remember if I threw my spooky, Miss Havisham wedding bouquet out or if I hid it in the new garage.  Hmmm.