angela's blog

On Saturday the husband and I engaged in one of our favorite Saturday activities .... moving! No, not us. Yet. We wish. This past weekend we helped Kim and Howard, and their 2 beautiful daughters Jessie and Jaylyn, move in what is now the longest moving project in which we have ever participated. It started at 9:30 am. We pulled up to find Curtis leaving. No truck from U-Haul. How annoying. Rather than sit around for 7 hours waiting for the truck we decided to just pack up the cars that were there (and there were quite a few) with boxes, clothes, and other things that were not furniture and/or big screen TVs and move that to the new house. Around 2 pm we did all we could, leaving only the largest furniture, like couches, and appliances, like the refrigerator (more about that later) and dryer behind to get when we got the truck that afternoon. Around 3 pm we ate - pizza from I heart NY pizza - and then had a break. JJ and I ran some errands and then returned to the old house to help move the rest of the furniture and appliances around 5:30. By about 7:30 pm we had finally filled the truck to the brim. Everything was on except for the washer, patio furniture, and some odds and ends from the garage. When we moved the refrigerator, the logical thing would have been to empty it out, put it on the dolly, put it on the truck. Howard decided that the quicker thing to do would be to move it as-is. Which we all found hilarious. Especially since we could hear things falling inside. At one point Howard opened the door, peered in, pulled out a carton of eggs, looked at them, went "They look fine!" put them back in the refrigerator, and away we continued on. At any rate, around 9:30 pm we left the new house, having gotten mostly everything inside. If you're counting it means we moved for nearly 12 hours. It was one of those moves where around 8 pm JJ and I took a short breather and remarked on how even though we were tired, we felt more blessed than anything else. Blessed because we could do that for someone. Blessed because it was something we both enjoyed doing and could do together. And blessed because after 11 hours of moving we didn't feel like killing anyone, including Dylan or Jessie and Jaylyn. Speaking of Jessie, she made the move ... well more interesting for me anyway. At the old house she wanted to help. To put this in perspective, Jessie is 2 going on 3. She's sturdy but not very big. She wanted to carry stuff, but generally would grab a bag or a box and then sit down and sigh, "Too heavy." So we would assign her to carry stuff like ... her doll carriage or a bag of diapers out to the car. On 2 or 3 instances we'd be going back inside and she would turn to me and go "Come on ... go upstairs now." And about 4 stairs in she'd lift her arms up and indicate she wanted to be carried "Up!" Howard noticed this and went "Oh great, Angela gets twice the work. Carry Jessie up, carry box down." No kidding. After 2 or 3 carry-Jessie-ups we stopped that. It wasn't that I minded and that Jessie wasn't adorable ... no, it was that I figured the extra 30 pounds of upstairs climbing would be needed later. One of the things that both JJ and I took away from this particular move is Howard's devotion. We don't know Kim and Howard all that well (although this is not to say that we'd be open to that) but we are good friends with Kim's sister, Michele. Howard was telling us that they were packing up and moving mostly because Jaylyn is old enough for school now and they wanted to move to Chapel Hill for the school system. Both JJ and I saw in Howard just pure love and sacrifice for his wife and daughters. He was moving, it seemed, not because he personally wanted to leave his house, but because it was what was best for his wife and children. We hope that down the road (like, 5 or 6 years down the road down the road) when we have children that we can do what Howard did this weekend. God blessed the Forrests and their marathon moving day. We were blessed because of it, too.

Posted by Mrs. Cooper on 8.01.2005 at 8/01/2005 09:02:00 AM | Permalink