m-m-m-move-tastic!

"hello?" I say, half-hallucinating I'm so tired after days of packing boxes and three hours of snatched Zs.

"HI! This is DANIEL! from M-M-M-MOVE-TASTIC! How are YOU this fine morning?!"

Laughing, "Hi, Daniel. Ohhh, I'm okay. How are you doing?"

"GREAT! I LOVE STAIRS! If I loved stairs any MORE, I'd be TWINS!!"

at 7 they arrive, three guys, who, true to daniel's claim and their glowing yelp reviews, seem indeed to love stairs (we're moving from 3rd flr walkup to 3rd flr walkup) and RUN back from the truck after each deposit-- these guys are atheletes.

unfortunately, the truck's not big enough for all of our stuff, despite our having gotten rid of LOTS over the last several days-- by 9 a.m. the truck's full, and there's still a bunch of stuff in the apartment. we caravan over to the new place while I feverishly make calls trying to find a solution, guys from work last minute, something, but it's a sunday morning, and nobody's picking up. on the other end we wrangle with a narrow alley, briefly consider a move up the front stairs but are quickly discouraged by a suddenly-appearing officious note from another tenant, "ALL MOVE-INS ON BACK STAIRS", deal with it, figure it out, start unloading-- discover that the narrowness of our back deck and screen door opening direction mean that someone has to stand there opening and closing the door as the guys carry stuff in-- which totally irks me as a waste of a human being, I try to devise a solution with bungie cords, and chris immediately disassembles it, which leads to our 237th spat of the morning. ah, moving.

there are a couple of hispanic neighbor guys hanging around, offering help, and we briefly consider a second round for the remainder of apartment contents-- but we learn that each additional hour past our 11 a.m. u-haul due time will run us an additional $50 and say screw it-- we'll hire the same guys to come back again for the second leg on tuesday night.

all week we go to work during the day and then come back to one apartment or the other and work-- moving stuff or pulling hardware from walls, painting, cleaning-- by thursday we're totally out of the old place, my company's closing early for our annual summer party, and we enter the holiday weekend-- halleluiah.

bit by bit we unpack boxes, square things away-- though there's still a lot to get settled, we now have a shower curtain up and most of the dishes in accessible cupboards, the bed up off the floor-- and a lovely new little back deck area, where we collapse at day's end with cool beverages and watch fireworks over our neighborhood and speculate about the new neighbors from bits we've gleaned glimpsing them in passing in the courtyard or out on their back decks throughout the week-- both those who wave across the distance and those who pass without a glance of acknowledgement.

the el train rumbles by at street level right outside our front windows. during the day the ding-ding-ding of the bells feels like home again and gets hushed at night. we overlook dense treetops, directly across the street from a small park where children play and laugh and there was a free concert on our first night. there's a little coffee shop and a ballet school downstairs. the river's about a two block walk away. we're neither as young as we used to be and are both pretty well exhausted and still recovering. I suspect I've given myself achilles tendonitis. on friday we made the rounds of shelter dogs, but a puppy may be right for us. we'll see.

anyhow, we're in a good place, together.