I'll See Your Crappy Vacation and Raise You a Moving Trip From Hell
Well, I finally did it. I trekked over 1700 miles cross country in a rented moving van! Skip dee doo dah! I finally realized my dream of having a flat tire on said truck and waiting by the side of the road for three hours while a service guy came out and replaced a cheap ass Firestone tire that had the tread roll right off.
What was the purpose of this Homeric (Simpson) Epic? My mother-in-law finally decided that after three years of marriage to her daughter I was of sound enough mind and outstanding character and that she could indeed leave her only child with me, our cats and mortgage and head back to the family homestead in Wisconsin. What a joyous 8 days was had by all.
My list of accomplishments:
Dear Diary
1. First I got to load the moving truck all by myself. One can’t underestimate the fulfillment you can get by hoisting dressers, boxes of text books, and all manner of useless shit up over stairs and into a truck. Like the kid in the diaper commercial, “I’m a big boy now.”
2. I got to make unscheduled stops for her cats. The “chase” car following carefully behind me held my wife and mother-in-law and two cats who desperately wanted all of their previous meals outside their bodies…. by whatever means possible.
3. We were all privileged to spend one night in “Arm Pit” Hotel outside glamorous Pittsburgh, PA. (Ok, it was a Motel 6. Twist my arm why don’t you.) When we returned from a dinner of inedible food, we were informed that we wouldn’t need more than the one towel in our rooms because our hot water was a little tepid. By tepid they meant of course, testicle-shrinking-absolute-zero cold. The cats showed their disdain by again emptying themselves of all food particles.
4. After a morning that held no hot shower, and the cat’s stomachs fully on E, I got to drive about three hours until the above mentioned tire episode. Exit 118 of scenic interstate 80 in Ohio offers an amazing view of tractor trailers, litter, and family farms poised to go tits up. Don’t they all? I thought the family farm was in a museum in Canada.
5. Fate smiled on me and allowed me to have a piece of dirt get lodged under a contact lens while doing about 75mph near O’Hare Airport in Chicago. We managed to find a truck stop just north of Chicago where a truck driver who was toweling off in the men’s room and got to see me run my contact under the tap and stick it back on my eye. At that particular moment I would have preferred to remain sightless.
It was also at this stop that my back reminded me that I’d been in a vehicle (moving and at rest) for nearly 17 hours of the last two days and that as a PR hack, lifting multiple heavy objects is not a usual part of my day, unless of course you want to count hauling my soul around.
6. We achieved the dream of pulling into my wife’s grandmother’s house well after the dark in freezing rain. The best was yet to come.
7. I can now also check off “shrieking like a little girl” from my list of things to do before I die. About 2:00 a.m. when my body decided to roll over in the bed the pain said, “Hello MAGGOT! ARE YOU LOOKING AT ME SNOWBALL?! DO YOU THINK THIS IS FUNNY PRIVATE JOKER?!! Why don’t you lie face down on the floor for about a half an hour until the ibuprofen starts to kick in?” And so I did.
Well, I could go on and on. I’ll end with the “local boys” who came over to unload the truck for me because of my back. Right now in some Wisconsin bar there are a couple of guys yucking it up about the city guy who was too delicate to unload the truck. Yeah well screw you. We gave you each 10 bucks to bend your backs and in DC you can’t get a sexy look for less than $50. HA HA! We’d have given you a hundred to unload that crap and get on with our lives!
Hollow, I know, but you take your victories where you can.
8:36:18 PM 
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