Thirteen moves

Ugh. I hate moving.

And it keeps getting tougher every time.

I have boxes in my garage which have remained unpacked since our move from Texas in ’98. That garage . . . man oh man I have nightmares about that garage. I can’t wait until we hold our yard sale, because maybe after that I’ll feel like I have more real stuff than junk. Right now, junk wins, no contest.

Thirteen (or more) moves, below the cut.

1. San Gabriel to Temple City. Hey, Sis, why did we move out of the house on Southview? The new neighborhood wasn’t any better, nor was the house much larger or nicer. Was it (cue dread-laden music) the NEIGHBORS?

Sorry, friends. Inside family joke.

This was my first and easiest move. When my parents went house-hunting, all I ever did was check out the backyard and declare the soil good or poor. I didn’t ask for much; I didn’t even care if I got my own room (I didn’t). All I wanted was a spot where I could grow sweet corn.

2. The first move to Berkeley. I brought clothes, my bike, some school supplies, and various tchotchkes from the gf. My heaviest possession (after the bike) was the graduation present from my sister: a big, fat dictionary.

I could move everything I owned with a single car, in a single trip.

3. Boarding house to the dorms. You know, I didn’t even own a stereo! But by now, I owned a few more pounds of books, the typical college student’s book shelf (cinder blocks and boards), and an electric frying pan. No mattress, no desk — my boarding house had provided both, as did the dorms.

I could still move everything with one car, one trip.

4. Dorms to apartment. Another easy move — more books, of course, but no furniture. While in the apartment, I picked up a mattress (but no bed frame or box springs) and a huge desk from the Ashby flea market. I’ll always remember buying that desk. Do you know that scene in The Life of Brian when Brian is on the run, and he wants to buy a fake beard as a disguise, but the guy won’t let him have it without haggling first? That was me at the Ashby flea market. The vendor felt compelled to teach me how to haggle. You college kids got no sense.

5. Apartment to room in Atherton. Now, this one was a bit more difficult. IIRC, my roommate Roger had a truck, and we were able to fit the big fat desk and my mattress and all my books and other stuff in the truck bed. A little over an hour’s drive south, and we were in Atherton, an upscale town with a dingy border. I rented a room in a house where I lived with several other Stanford students, all of them from middle-income families, because I’m sure no well-to-do Stanford family would let their precious live in THIS house. It was grimy, probably hadn’t seen a housekeeper or a gardener since the Eisenhower Administration, and I loved it.

But I got married at the end of my first year of med school, which means I had to move from

6. Atherton to married student’s housing. Who helped me with this move? I can’t remember! My possessions had expanded only by the acquisition of more books and more kitchen gear. Someone had a truck . . . probably my soon-to-be father-in-law. Another painless move.

Marriage. That was the culprit.

7. Married student housing to Coleman Ave. Have I ever told the story of our neighbor in married student housing, the one who overheard Karen and me engaging in married-student-housing-behavior and screamed at the dividing wall, “They should be punished”? What a nut.

I can’t recall if that’s why we moved out of married student housing, but in retrospect, it’s reason enough. Or perhaps we needed more room for the snakes.

While in married student housing, we bought a futon, a small breakfast-nook-sized dining room table and chairs, some bookshelves, more kitchen stuff, and cages for the pets. We were still able to move with the help of Karen’s dad and his truck, but I think it took a few trips.

So: painful, but not cracked-tooth painful. More like studying-for-finals painful.

One thing I missed from married student housing was the collective garden plot. I grew corn and strawberries. And good night, was that soil fertile! I had never grown corn like that in Southern California.

8. Coleman Ave. to Oakwoods in San Jose. My lab buddies helped me with this move. We had too much furniture to make the move using a regular pickup truck, so for the first time, I rented a U-Haul. And promptly plowed the top of the thing into the concrete bulkhead of the Oakwood’s parking structure. (What, you mean I can’t park this on the shady lower levels?) The other grad students and post-docs got a good laugh out of it, but this was my first real taste of moving hell.

On top of that, we were lured into the Oakwoods Apartments on false premises. I’m sure those young women in the hot tub were hired for that very day when the management showed us the place.

9. Oakwoods to South Pasadena. We threw safely stowed our snakes into pillow cases and drove down I-5 in a rented U-Haul. As best I can recall, we didn’t have much time for this move. I finished med school in mid-June, and County wanted me to start internship June 25 or thereabouts. So rush rush rush down to South Pasadena, unpack, settle in, and then it’s neck-deep in the most grueling rewarding experience of my life.

The move wasn’t bad. Road noise was loud enough that we didn’t have to listen to our boas slithering about. We were disappointed not to get pulled over by the cops, though. What’s in the bag, ma’am? Mind if I take a look?

10. South Pasadena to Alhambra. Eventually, we tired of apartment living, and we really got fed up with our car stereos getting stolen. We even got the ones with detachable face plates — you know, the kind that are worthless (supposedly) without the face plate? They would still steal them, breaking our window every time. It gets old.

In Alhambra, we rented a cute home with Spanish architecture and a nice little backyard. We adopted a couple of California desert tortoises, and we had chameleons galore back then, too. Our landlord was a Cal Tech rocket scientist (really!) — cool guy, best landlord ever.

Jake was born while we were living in this house.

11. Alhambra to San Antonio. We rented for a while. Flew into San Antonio in the thick of the heat and knew almost immediately we’d made a mistake. Still, it took me two years to correct that error.

This was our first move with professional movers. We would never again escape having to have professional movers . . . and, still, we didn’t have all that much junk.

We had to ship our various pets — oh, lordy, was it ever a hassle. And when I unpacked for the kitchen, I sliced off a good bit of skin from my right little finger. You know how they say humans have no memory for pain? That’s all BS. I still remember the electric jolt I felt when my finger settled onto that spike of broken glass. So, yes, another painful move.

I spent the first few weeks at UT out of commission due to this injury. My chairman joked that he had never seen an employee hit the Worker’s Comp rolls as fast as I had.

12. San Antonio to Boerne. Should be pronounced “bo-air-nuh” but those wacky Texans pronounce it “Bernie,” as in “Weekend At Bernie’s.” This was the first home we had ever owned, and it was a beaut. There was an attached garage and a detached garage (those wacky Texans, they love their garages, too), a decent kitchen, open floor plan. Very homey overall.

Since it was a local move, we were able to move all the critters ourselves, so it wasn’t too difficult. Oh, we even had a sun room where all the pets could stay. Nice, eh? I think the previous owner had used it as her sewing room. We used it as our snake, lizard, and frog room. Much the same idea.

We lived a bit south of Boerne, if I remember correctly. What was it called, Fair Oaks? yup, Fair Oaks. I just checked Google Maps — and, hot damn! We lived less than a mile from a country club. Did I know that?

13. Fair Oaks to Crescent City. Oy, another long distance move, with precious little garage space at the California end for all of our junk. More air freight charges for the snakes. I think the hospital picked up our relocation expenses, so at least it wasn’t painful to the wallet.

Remember how Alhambra had our best landlord ever? Our rental in CC had our worst landlord ever. He had convinced himself that we would buy his monstrous house, and when we didn’t bite, he made up his mind to keep our security deposit. I suppose we could have contested it, but who has time for court proceedings? I surely didn’t. The guy was a nutter.

This home was near Lake Earl, which had bad and good points — mosquitoes and tree frogs, respectively. We had nice fruit trees in the front yard, and Jake had lots of girls next door who would faun over him. Would have been a good experience, save for the evil landlord.

14, 15, 16: the moves to Brookings, back to Crescent City (to allow for remodeling in Brookings), and back to Brookings.

Enough kvetching. Time for you to kvetch at me.

Got anything to kvetch about?

thursday thirteen

protected static: something about sex. I think.

D.