We had a busy weekend, hence the no posting. On Saturday, after taking care of my pet-sitting clients, we hooked up the trailer to the Wonderful Spouse's truck, we jumped into our vehicles and headed over to Karen's to help her move. She was moving from a 3rd floor apartment to a small cottage.
We had helped move Karen into her apartment and knew that we weren't in for a fun time. Her apartment is over a barn (well, sort of, but that's the best I can do to describe it to you) so to get to it we had to go up a couple flights of stairs then down a narrow hallway (where the roof slopes so you have to lean to avoid bumping your head. That part isn't too bad, it's the final flight of steps that is a doozy; they are very steep, about 2 1/2 feet wide and the ceiling isn't very tall (Even the box springs for her double bed were an adventure because of the low ceiling.). This section is so bad that when we originally moved her into the place, we couldn't get a small sofa up the steps so we ended up trading her the sofa for a futon that we had since the futon could be disassembled. She got the best of the deal (which was fine with us) as the sofa was old and bedraggled and the futon was only a year or two old.
We got my truck, WS's truck and part of the trailer loaded up before her sister, brother-in-law and nephew showed up. Unfortunately the B-I-L has bad knees and a bad back, so only made a couple of trips up the stairs before he couldn't handle it anymore. Karen's sister has carpel-tunnel and can't do any heavy lifting and her nephew thought 20 pounds was extremely heavy. Needless to say, WS and I moved most of the heavy stuff. They did bring another truck with them and did what they could by loading lighter stuff, so they were still a big help.
Once we got all the trucks and the trailer loaded, we made a caravan out to Karen's new place. What a relief it was to find that there were only two steps to get into the place and the doors were nice and wide! The unloading took very little time and we all headed back to the apartment for another load. By this time it was about 2:30 (we started a little after 10) and I had to be back to take care of horses by 5. I helped load more stuff into other trucks then loaded her birds/bird cages up into my truck. One bird cage was just a bit bigger than my door (I have an SUV, but the tailgate doesn't work at the present time, so I was trying to put it in through the side door) but with much grunting and swearing we forced the cage in.
I went to the cottage and unloaded my truck (more grunting and swearing to get the big bird cage out), went to take care of horses and got home about 15 minutes before WS returned at 6:00. We both agreed that we had done way too many stairs and that our legs would be sore the next day, which they were. the important part is that Karen has been moved to a place that is quieter and where she can actually get hot water. In her apartment, she was the last in line for water pressure and they all shared a hot water tank - usually when she took a shower it was luke-warm at best and went cold if another aparment used hot water at the same time. She seems to be extremely happy with her new place already, so it was worth it!
Sounds like your time was well spent. Hurray for you and WS!
Posted by: Cop Car | May 03, 2004 at 05:52 PM