Brian has a sister, Julie, who's deaf and nearly blind. She and her husband, Armando (who's deaf) were living in an apartment about 40 miles from us. My mother-in-law lives about 40 miles farther down the road. She was concerned about Julie's health and well-being, so she decided to have them come share her 4-bedroom house. So, we volunteered to help move them on Saturday. We knew that Armando was a pack rat, so we tried to rent the biggest U-Haul truck we could find. Unfortunately, the biggest one they had was only a 17-footer, so to appease us they gave us two days and 250 miles for free. We didn't think we'd need the two days, but it came in handy - God was watching out for us.
When we got to the apartment, we were pleasantly surprised to see Julie's friend B. there - he's also deaf, but sensible and easy to communicate with, unlike J. and A. We tackled the garage first - it was only a one-car garage, but stuffed to the rafters with boxes and furniture. We filled the whole truck, and hadn't even gotten to the apartment yet. Brian's brother, Kent, arrived with two of his daughters and their neighbor just as wew were finishing up with the truck, and we loaded more boxes into his van. Some of the boxes were filled with empty cat food boxes and other packages, most of them neatly wrapped. Why on earth would anyone want to keep that?!? We threw away as much as we could while we were loading the truck, but I didn't want to overload the dumpsters at the apartment complex.
We drove the truck down to Mom's house and unloaded it in her driveway. Rachel and Matt joined us there, and all the kids set to work opening boxes and sorting trash from usable items. The pile of stuff was overwhelming. We had left Armando back at the apartment to finish getting the apartment ready to load - we didn't want him to see us throwing his "prized" possessions away.
We left Matt with all the girls to continue sorting junk while we drove back for the second load. We got almost everything into the truck and Kent's van, but there were still a few pieces of furniture in the garage. Armando was quite upset at having to leave a few things behind, especially his collection of mirrors. He didn't seem to understand that he wouldn't have room in the new place for all this stuff. When we moved the furniture out, we found a couple of real pack rat nests and showed them to him. The apartment was filthy and the carpet will have to be replaced - there's no chance of them getting back their security deposit.
When we got back down to Mom's house with the second load, we put everything they would need into the house - dressers, clothes, medicines, toiletries, food, etc. and left the rest out on the lawn. Armando rummaged through the boxes, looking for treasures to save. We left there around 9:30 p.m., leaving the truck there and driving my car 80 miles back home. We went to bed around midnight, sore and exhausted.
On Sunday, we drove 80 miles back to Mom's house and started going throught the stuff, looking for things worth putting in the 10'x10' storage unit he was renting. Jacob and Caasi joined us today - we were glad to have Jacob's help, and Mom was happy to see her great-grandson. We loaded the furniture first, and anything Armando brought to the truck. The whole process was pretty painful for him - he was hurt and angry with us, even though we were spending our time, energy, and money to help him. We filled the truck, then took it to the storage unit. By some miracle, we managed to cram everything into the storage unit. We went back to the house and stuffed the rest of the junk into the truck, then took it back to our house, where we put the obvious trash into our horse trailer and the stuff that needs to be sorted into the garage.
This morning, I had to get up early to return the truck before I head to work, which is what I'm going to do right now. Work should be a lot easier than my weekend was.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment