Home Is Where You Make It
*blinks, checks the date* Its been THAT long since I updated JiH? Whoa. I apologize, folks. But, for once, something actually HAPPENED in my life. 'Course, stuff happens in people's lives all the time, but rarely is it worth really talking about--unless you're one of those Twitter-addicts who has to tell everyone when you bleed the lizard. (I kinda hate Twitter, but I HAVE found use for it. If you're a fan of "...That is SO wrong." humor? Check out @TheCoreyHolcomb and thank me later.)
Anyhow. I thought about giving this place an update several times, but honestly I just did not feel up to it. I apologize for that, as I like to keep this thing up to date, at least for the Song and Music Video of the Day. (Retroactive updates are coming, but they're not the same.)
The reason for my absence, is that, basically, I've moved. Quite the coincedence, since I went through such a hassle to move earlier this year with my girlfriend, but that didn't work out (and neither did the relationship), but I ended up moving anyway.
I won't get into the specifics for the sake of my immediate family, but the short version is: We had thirty days to pack our shit and get the fuck out, starting September 15th. The story SHOULD go something like: We packed our shi, and got the fuck out October 15th, the end. But, of course, my life is rarely THAT simple. (S'got something to do with this. *holds up shiny Hero Card* Universe finds comedy in screwing with me.) Now, what was the experience like??? I'm glad you asked! Hit the jump to hear allllll about it.
For various reasons I'll again not describe so as not to drag other people not me into this story, despite packing crap up, we didn't even have an apartment until early last week--and we couldn't even get INTO said apartment until Tuesday evening. (Bearing in mind, the fifteenth? A Thursday.)
So come Wednesday, we have, essentially, two days to move out of a house with three bedrooms, a kitchen, two bathrooms, and one large living room with a full couch (not the wuss couch a couple people fit on and its snug, oh no--the kind that splits into sections, and fits entires familes) inside of it. Naturally, I was slightly panicked...but its safe to say I dropped the slightly when no one showed up at 10AM. Then 11. Noon. 1. 2. At 2:40, I hear noises outside, and notice a U-Haul attempting to back up in the yard.
Despite the fact that I'm one of three people living in the house, and my room had the least to pack (a lot of toys, most of which went into storage over the weekend), when the truck pulled in, I was the only person there. Fortunately, my aunt and two uncles came to help out...I thought, that is, until my aunt and one of my uncles had to head all the way back uptown about three minutes later, leaving me, my other uncle, and my mother who'd just arrived to toss every box in the kitchen, my room, her room, and the living room into the U-Haul. (...Did I mention my mother likes to collect glasses? Lots and lots and lots....*sighs*...and lots and lots of glasses.)
This leaves me and my mother to spend the next hour and a half tossing the contents of an entire house into a truck by ourselves. Oh, and thanks to the rain for the last three weeks, the ground was basically soup, so we spent much of our energy basically avoiding slipping and busting our asses.
By the time we were finished, I was already completely drained of energy and not wanting to move again, and the house was really just 1/4th done. The next couple hours of the day involved me throwing some of the REALLY heavy boxes into storage, finding something to eat, and visiting our new apartment to carry some early, preliminary crap with my mom and brother (who came home just after we finished loading all the boxes in) while everyone else was off doing whatever.
Just as we finished (which was ALSO exhausting), we get a call from the rest of the family who's at our home again, waiting on us. Yay. They popped up to help us get the REALLY heavy shit out of the house--the five-part couch, my mother's two-part glass case, her curio cabinet, her two dressers, the living room table, washer, the dryer, my two bookcases, her two bookcases...I'm sure there's a saying somewhere that goes, "You never realize how much crap you have until you have to move." That statement is, insanely, INCREDIBLY true.
We managed to wrap up the heavy crap--taking care of another fourth of the house in the process--at around 10PM that night. But that? THAT was the easy part. Here's something you never want to have anyone say to you:
"Hey man. This is what I need you to do. Go to bed. Get some rest. 'Cause tomorrow? Its just me and you on this."
...Me and my uncle. To move all the crap left in the house in a single day. And get it into the new place. I was so psyched, I felt like cutting myself. With a chainsaw.
Despite being utterly exhausted, I really only slept from about 11:30 to 4:30AM, and ended up staying up for quite a bit helping my brother drag crap to the trashcan for the last pick-up. (...What a coincedence, right?) Did you know mud gets worse if a lot of people walk in it over and over? Jot it down if you didn't.
After he left, I passed out around 6:30AM for a brief nap before being dragged out of bed again at a quarter to nine to empty the house out.
...Which didn't work. If you're still paying attention (don't feel bad if you're not, clearly WE weren't), you'd know why: With all the crap I described, the truck is completely full! So now we hop into the truck (would rather hope into the Delorean and zap into the future where I already finished this crap) and head up to the apartment.
Of course, its an upstairs apartment. Which are completely awesome if you've been there for a little while, but absolutely terrible if you're moving in. I'd already done the stairs thing the night before and my legs were already aching, but I dragged myself upstairs along with my mother's bed for the first trip.
Thank God, by the time we got downstairs again, a bit of help had arrived. A frequent customer at my mom's job she'd gotten to know agreed to help out. Call me whatever you want, but until you've seen the inside of a full U-Haul truck and know not only do you have to unload that entire truck, carry it upstairs and then load it AGAIN and unload it all over again, I don't wanna hear it.
For a little while, it kinda felt like an RPG. I'd go up the stairs with some boxes, come downstairs, and someone new had showed up. "Character X has joined your party!" As always, its weird with new people, but the help is definitely appreciated once you realize how tough these new monsters are. (Those stairs are still tough. I'm getting a lot of XP from them until I level up enough for them to be easy again.
Between my aunt, one of my uncles, four different people my mother got from work, me, and a friend of the family, the eight of us managed to unload the bulk of the stuff before noon...just in time for it to start raining on us. Which, I actually didn't mind, because the work + the heat basically had me drenched in sweat, so at least then I could pretend it was the rain that caused it.
The rain let up after about 30 minutes or so--in the meantime we took a brief break, managed to get a little water in our systems before making our next move--which was, sadly, to head back out to the old house (a good seven or eight mile drive) and pick up the remaining loose crap. A few picture stands, our freezer, the electronic devices, clothes, etc... Shockingly? We filled the U-Haul. Again. To the brim, almost, because my family seems incapable of looking at something and going, "Y'know what? I haven't used that since 1998. That can stay here."
At this point, I've got yesterday's wear and tear on my body, a few hours sleep fueling me with no food since Wednesday, and a full U-Haul full of crap to unload. Oh. And half the help leaves. Now its just me and two of the guys I've never met carrying crap back up the stairs to our new apartment while my brother hands out of the truck. (My mom had gone to drop some of our outside furniture she'd gotten on a friend's truck in storage.)
I feel like, maybe, he got the easy job. I'm fully willing to admit I could be wrong, but...let me put it this way. You know the guy who's working the least (this doesn't make him the weakest, just the guy doing the least) when EVERYONE else is completely exhausted, and he's like, "No no, let's keep working. We don't need a break!" No nigga, YOU don't need a break. The rest of us have spent the last four or five hours climbing stairs!
I'm not ashamed to say that while the first truck had most of our stuff, and definitely all the heavy crap? The second truck was far more exhausting. With no one possessing the sense to stop for a break, half the morning crew gone, and the day's work having worn on everyone, the trips were far slower. And with more smaller boxes, they were more frequent. I confess to not being anywhere near the top of my game (even for me), but I'm also not ashamed to say more than once I had to sit down out of pure exhaustion. Hilariously (now, at least...), at both places, the universe would get a nice laugh at our expense when it would pour rain on us while loading and unloading the truck, then go COMPLETELY sunny again before going back to rain. (Again. Its the Hero Card.) After about an hour and a half of this (4:30? 5?), we finally emptied out the truck of mostly anything heading upstairs.
Around this time, the crew switched out again. Everyone but the family left, then even my brother left, leaving my mother and I, to wearily head upstairs to organize things a bit, making sure all the boxes were in the right place. (Have you noticed a trend, yet?)
My brother would return almost an hour later (6 or so) to unload a few more things from the truck, and ask for my help with a few of the more unwieldly pieces of leftover furniture. Not long after this, my uncle would pop again to help us get the remaining bits of furniture into storage, including the freezer, the washer, and the dryer.
It would be around 6:30 when we found our way to the storage center. My mom had already loaded her own car down with stuff, so I figured I'd go with her first to help. By this point, my body was completely drained (...and, I was chafing. When was the last time you went from "clean pair of draws" to chafing in one day?), so I persuaded her to go back home after we emptied her car out.
...But again, the universe needs its laughs. So just as we're finishing our work and have gotten in the car--we're driving off, people--my mom remembers...she's the only person who's got a key to the lock on the door! So we HAVE to stay. And, of course, as we have to stay, despite being exhausted, I have to help.
Admittedly, at this point, there really wasn't much I was capable of doing. I was tired, sure, but I'd been tired the other day, and I'd had a hour break just minutes earlier. No, hilariously enough, my thighs were so chafed by this point I looked like one of those old time gunfighters you see in the westerns that walk bow-legged all the time. (And to think. As a child I used to think, man it must hurt to walk like that.)
An hour later, our storage locker has become so full I'm not sure whether it or the apartment has more of our crap in it, and we're about to roll out. Of course, the universe has yet ANOTHER joke up its sleeve. The company locks up at 7:30, and it is, approximately 7:34. We're locked in. I really thought these sorts of things only happened in the movies...
After a brief ten minute phone call, my mom finds the key they kept and lets us all out, right in time to allow us to carry all the useless junk she'll never use up the stairs to our new place in a few "really quick trips".
Its not until well after ten when we finally all manage to sit down for the night (after a really quick trip down to Wal-Mart to buy coaxial cables for our TVs), completely wiped out.
In the days since then (...what, three of them?), I've managed to recover almost to full again, with only a minor problem of my calves still sore that's bugging me. But, we're definitely all moved in now, if not fully unpacked. As with everything, moving comes with its sets of positives and negatives. A brief overview...
Positives:
+ I'm around people again. This is a big deal for me. The "roommates" (my mother and elder brother) prefer the peace and quiet, but I haven't really been around all that many people since I graduated high school.
+ Free Cable.
+ I. Have. Fast. Internet. Thank God, is all I can say. I've been trapped in the maze of dial-up since 1999, but more prominently since December 2003. Having this internet is, without question, a blessing that I've literally been praying for for ages.
+ Working fridge. Ours had been crap for ages. We were using the freezer part to keep drinks cold, so there was little to no space.
+ There's a small balcony on the back where you can go out and sit in peace. If you see me online in the daytime and I don't answer? I'm out there for breakfast now.
+ My freaking cell phone WORKS now. I've had one for like two months now (two different ones), but they were really only that useful uptown, which--I mentioned people, right?
+ Friends actually don't mind visiting you when your house isn't 15 miles roundtrip...AFTER you've already gotten away from the city limits. (Haven't told anyone yet because I'm working on getting this place cleaned up, admittedly.)
Negatives:
- ...Uhm. We don't own this place? Which, kind of a non-issue. Didn't own the last one either, and the way they kept pulling the football away from us at the last second got very old. Charlie Brown should've kicked the crap out of Lucy.
- Can't go outside and scream like an idiot. Rarely did that, but hey. Its no longer an option.
- Can't pop fireworks at my home anymore. I'll REALLY miss this though--great childhood memories are tied to my cousins and I setting off as many fireworks as we could in marathon hour, two hour, three hour sessions.
There are others, possibly, but I haven't thought of them yet. I'll get back to it. For now? Room straightening calls. Later guys.
Anyhow. I thought about giving this place an update several times, but honestly I just did not feel up to it. I apologize for that, as I like to keep this thing up to date, at least for the Song and Music Video of the Day. (Retroactive updates are coming, but they're not the same.)
The reason for my absence, is that, basically, I've moved. Quite the coincedence, since I went through such a hassle to move earlier this year with my girlfriend, but that didn't work out (and neither did the relationship), but I ended up moving anyway.
I won't get into the specifics for the sake of my immediate family, but the short version is: We had thirty days to pack our shit and get the fuck out, starting September 15th. The story SHOULD go something like: We packed our shi, and got the fuck out October 15th, the end. But, of course, my life is rarely THAT simple. (S'got something to do with this. *holds up shiny Hero Card* Universe finds comedy in screwing with me.) Now, what was the experience like??? I'm glad you asked! Hit the jump to hear allllll about it.
For various reasons I'll again not describe so as not to drag other people not me into this story, despite packing crap up, we didn't even have an apartment until early last week--and we couldn't even get INTO said apartment until Tuesday evening. (Bearing in mind, the fifteenth? A Thursday.)
So come Wednesday, we have, essentially, two days to move out of a house with three bedrooms, a kitchen, two bathrooms, and one large living room with a full couch (not the wuss couch a couple people fit on and its snug, oh no--the kind that splits into sections, and fits entires familes) inside of it. Naturally, I was slightly panicked...but its safe to say I dropped the slightly when no one showed up at 10AM. Then 11. Noon. 1. 2. At 2:40, I hear noises outside, and notice a U-Haul attempting to back up in the yard.
Despite the fact that I'm one of three people living in the house, and my room had the least to pack (a lot of toys, most of which went into storage over the weekend), when the truck pulled in, I was the only person there. Fortunately, my aunt and two uncles came to help out...I thought, that is, until my aunt and one of my uncles had to head all the way back uptown about three minutes later, leaving me, my other uncle, and my mother who'd just arrived to toss every box in the kitchen, my room, her room, and the living room into the U-Haul. (...Did I mention my mother likes to collect glasses? Lots and lots and lots....*sighs*...and lots and lots of glasses.)
This leaves me and my mother to spend the next hour and a half tossing the contents of an entire house into a truck by ourselves. Oh, and thanks to the rain for the last three weeks, the ground was basically soup, so we spent much of our energy basically avoiding slipping and busting our asses.
By the time we were finished, I was already completely drained of energy and not wanting to move again, and the house was really just 1/4th done. The next couple hours of the day involved me throwing some of the REALLY heavy boxes into storage, finding something to eat, and visiting our new apartment to carry some early, preliminary crap with my mom and brother (who came home just after we finished loading all the boxes in) while everyone else was off doing whatever.
Just as we finished (which was ALSO exhausting), we get a call from the rest of the family who's at our home again, waiting on us. Yay. They popped up to help us get the REALLY heavy shit out of the house--the five-part couch, my mother's two-part glass case, her curio cabinet, her two dressers, the living room table, washer, the dryer, my two bookcases, her two bookcases...I'm sure there's a saying somewhere that goes, "You never realize how much crap you have until you have to move." That statement is, insanely, INCREDIBLY true.
We managed to wrap up the heavy crap--taking care of another fourth of the house in the process--at around 10PM that night. But that? THAT was the easy part. Here's something you never want to have anyone say to you:
"Hey man. This is what I need you to do. Go to bed. Get some rest. 'Cause tomorrow? Its just me and you on this."
...Me and my uncle. To move all the crap left in the house in a single day. And get it into the new place. I was so psyched, I felt like cutting myself. With a chainsaw.
Despite being utterly exhausted, I really only slept from about 11:30 to 4:30AM, and ended up staying up for quite a bit helping my brother drag crap to the trashcan for the last pick-up. (...What a coincedence, right?) Did you know mud gets worse if a lot of people walk in it over and over? Jot it down if you didn't.
After he left, I passed out around 6:30AM for a brief nap before being dragged out of bed again at a quarter to nine to empty the house out.
...Which didn't work. If you're still paying attention (don't feel bad if you're not, clearly WE weren't), you'd know why: With all the crap I described, the truck is completely full! So now we hop into the truck (would rather hope into the Delorean and zap into the future where I already finished this crap) and head up to the apartment.
Of course, its an upstairs apartment. Which are completely awesome if you've been there for a little while, but absolutely terrible if you're moving in. I'd already done the stairs thing the night before and my legs were already aching, but I dragged myself upstairs along with my mother's bed for the first trip.
Thank God, by the time we got downstairs again, a bit of help had arrived. A frequent customer at my mom's job she'd gotten to know agreed to help out. Call me whatever you want, but until you've seen the inside of a full U-Haul truck and know not only do you have to unload that entire truck, carry it upstairs and then load it AGAIN and unload it all over again, I don't wanna hear it.
For a little while, it kinda felt like an RPG. I'd go up the stairs with some boxes, come downstairs, and someone new had showed up. "Character X has joined your party!" As always, its weird with new people, but the help is definitely appreciated once you realize how tough these new monsters are. (Those stairs are still tough. I'm getting a lot of XP from them until I level up enough for them to be easy again.
Between my aunt, one of my uncles, four different people my mother got from work, me, and a friend of the family, the eight of us managed to unload the bulk of the stuff before noon...just in time for it to start raining on us. Which, I actually didn't mind, because the work + the heat basically had me drenched in sweat, so at least then I could pretend it was the rain that caused it.
The rain let up after about 30 minutes or so--in the meantime we took a brief break, managed to get a little water in our systems before making our next move--which was, sadly, to head back out to the old house (a good seven or eight mile drive) and pick up the remaining loose crap. A few picture stands, our freezer, the electronic devices, clothes, etc... Shockingly? We filled the U-Haul. Again. To the brim, almost, because my family seems incapable of looking at something and going, "Y'know what? I haven't used that since 1998. That can stay here."
At this point, I've got yesterday's wear and tear on my body, a few hours sleep fueling me with no food since Wednesday, and a full U-Haul full of crap to unload. Oh. And half the help leaves. Now its just me and two of the guys I've never met carrying crap back up the stairs to our new apartment while my brother hands out of the truck. (My mom had gone to drop some of our outside furniture she'd gotten on a friend's truck in storage.)
I feel like, maybe, he got the easy job. I'm fully willing to admit I could be wrong, but...let me put it this way. You know the guy who's working the least (this doesn't make him the weakest, just the guy doing the least) when EVERYONE else is completely exhausted, and he's like, "No no, let's keep working. We don't need a break!" No nigga, YOU don't need a break. The rest of us have spent the last four or five hours climbing stairs!
I'm not ashamed to say that while the first truck had most of our stuff, and definitely all the heavy crap? The second truck was far more exhausting. With no one possessing the sense to stop for a break, half the morning crew gone, and the day's work having worn on everyone, the trips were far slower. And with more smaller boxes, they were more frequent. I confess to not being anywhere near the top of my game (even for me), but I'm also not ashamed to say more than once I had to sit down out of pure exhaustion. Hilariously (now, at least...), at both places, the universe would get a nice laugh at our expense when it would pour rain on us while loading and unloading the truck, then go COMPLETELY sunny again before going back to rain. (Again. Its the Hero Card.) After about an hour and a half of this (4:30? 5?), we finally emptied out the truck of mostly anything heading upstairs.
Around this time, the crew switched out again. Everyone but the family left, then even my brother left, leaving my mother and I, to wearily head upstairs to organize things a bit, making sure all the boxes were in the right place. (Have you noticed a trend, yet?)
My brother would return almost an hour later (6 or so) to unload a few more things from the truck, and ask for my help with a few of the more unwieldly pieces of leftover furniture. Not long after this, my uncle would pop again to help us get the remaining bits of furniture into storage, including the freezer, the washer, and the dryer.
It would be around 6:30 when we found our way to the storage center. My mom had already loaded her own car down with stuff, so I figured I'd go with her first to help. By this point, my body was completely drained (...and, I was chafing. When was the last time you went from "clean pair of draws" to chafing in one day?), so I persuaded her to go back home after we emptied her car out.
...But again, the universe needs its laughs. So just as we're finishing our work and have gotten in the car--we're driving off, people--my mom remembers...she's the only person who's got a key to the lock on the door! So we HAVE to stay. And, of course, as we have to stay, despite being exhausted, I have to help.
Admittedly, at this point, there really wasn't much I was capable of doing. I was tired, sure, but I'd been tired the other day, and I'd had a hour break just minutes earlier. No, hilariously enough, my thighs were so chafed by this point I looked like one of those old time gunfighters you see in the westerns that walk bow-legged all the time. (And to think. As a child I used to think, man it must hurt to walk like that.)
An hour later, our storage locker has become so full I'm not sure whether it or the apartment has more of our crap in it, and we're about to roll out. Of course, the universe has yet ANOTHER joke up its sleeve. The company locks up at 7:30, and it is, approximately 7:34. We're locked in. I really thought these sorts of things only happened in the movies...
After a brief ten minute phone call, my mom finds the key they kept and lets us all out, right in time to allow us to carry all the useless junk she'll never use up the stairs to our new place in a few "really quick trips".
Its not until well after ten when we finally all manage to sit down for the night (after a really quick trip down to Wal-Mart to buy coaxial cables for our TVs), completely wiped out.
In the days since then (...what, three of them?), I've managed to recover almost to full again, with only a minor problem of my calves still sore that's bugging me. But, we're definitely all moved in now, if not fully unpacked. As with everything, moving comes with its sets of positives and negatives. A brief overview...
Positives:
+ I'm around people again. This is a big deal for me. The "roommates" (my mother and elder brother) prefer the peace and quiet, but I haven't really been around all that many people since I graduated high school.
+ Free Cable.
+ I. Have. Fast. Internet. Thank God, is all I can say. I've been trapped in the maze of dial-up since 1999, but more prominently since December 2003. Having this internet is, without question, a blessing that I've literally been praying for for ages.
+ Working fridge. Ours had been crap for ages. We were using the freezer part to keep drinks cold, so there was little to no space.
+ There's a small balcony on the back where you can go out and sit in peace. If you see me online in the daytime and I don't answer? I'm out there for breakfast now.
+ My freaking cell phone WORKS now. I've had one for like two months now (two different ones), but they were really only that useful uptown, which--I mentioned people, right?
+ Friends actually don't mind visiting you when your house isn't 15 miles roundtrip...AFTER you've already gotten away from the city limits. (Haven't told anyone yet because I'm working on getting this place cleaned up, admittedly.)
Negatives:
- ...Uhm. We don't own this place? Which, kind of a non-issue. Didn't own the last one either, and the way they kept pulling the football away from us at the last second got very old. Charlie Brown should've kicked the crap out of Lucy.
- Can't go outside and scream like an idiot. Rarely did that, but hey. Its no longer an option.
- Can't pop fireworks at my home anymore. I'll REALLY miss this though--great childhood memories are tied to my cousins and I setting off as many fireworks as we could in marathon hour, two hour, three hour sessions.
There are others, possibly, but I haven't thought of them yet. I'll get back to it. For now? Room straightening calls. Later guys.
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