Moving and Helping

It was an excellent drive home from Aberdeen today. The traffic was light, and the music was great on practically every station I tuned to. Oh, and no cops. An excellent finish to one ass-kickin' weekend of hard work.

As I predicted, the drive down on Friday after work was slow and tedious in many areas. As much as I tried to mentally prepare for it, it was a challenge. I had driven home from work on Friday afternoon as quickly as I could and immediately backed the truck up to the garage and loaded up Rhonda's television in behind her washer and dryer that were already there. After throwing a hand truck in and tying everything down, I went inside, grabbed all my stuff and took a quick shower. As luck would have it, my friend Greg rang the doorbell just as I was getting out of the shower. I hated to turn him away as it was plain that he was prepared to hang out for a while (he brought beer!), but he understood. After a few minutes of talk, away I went.

I got down to Rhon's house at about 6:30, and we immediately took the load I had over to her new house. With the help of a coworker named Chris, we had them all unloaded in minutes. She was so happy to have a washer and dryer of her own! She treated us to a nice burger dinner right afterwards... No doubt to suck us in to her web of impending moving hell the next day.

In addition to Chris, she had employed two of her students to help out as well, and everyone showed up at about 9:00 the next morning. Let me tell you, we all worked. I mean, we worked. No, I mean really--We WORKED. Her place had a hell of a lot of steps, and there was a lot of stuff to carry down all those steps. I guess I should consider myself lucky that I'm in pretty good shape, because I had no aches or pains the next day. I definitely knew I worked though, because by Saturday night, I was dead tired. We got everything moved with the exception of just a few minor little items and the stuff in the refrigerator. We had to cut the two teenagers loose at about 1:00pm, but by then we had moved almost all the of the big and heavy stuff down. Rhon's daughter Jocelyn showed up around that time carrying her baby boy, Corbin. He is grandma Rhonda's pride and joy for sure. Anyway, after sending Corbin home with his grandpa, Jocelyn stayed and helped for a few hours as well. After we were all moved and everyone else went home, Rhon and I still worked until pretty late last night, doing such things as hooking up the washer & dryer. She immediately had clothes churning away in them as soon as we hooked em up.

Today I spent all day today hooking up stuff. Her giant TV had to be hooked up to its cable box, the DVD player hooked up, the stereo hooked up, the computer put back together, and many other things. The computer hookup was complicated further by a lack of 3-prong outlets, so we had to make a store run for a few little things like that. We also put up a few plant hooks in the ceiling and installed her new doorbell. By the time I left it was about 5pm or so.

All in all, it was a very good weekend--Hard work or not. And I'd like to say we couldn't have done it without the help of the two boys or Jocelyn, but especially Chris. He is an amazingly hard worker. I could tell he was not used to work like that. It was obvious that it was kicking his ass. But did he complain? No, not one bit. He just kept on going. That's what I call a worker... And a helluva nice guy.

Rhon now has herself a real nice place with NO stairs (thank you thank you thank you) and all the comforts she was missing in that drafty old building she had inhabited for years. When I left today and hugged her goodbye, she was one happy lady!