KateInLA:: The Move

It was my last day in Florida. There I sat perched on the curb, covered in sweat and dust and angst. I watched the 18-wheeler with all of my earthly possessions stuffed into the cab — my black BMW served as the book end at the back — pull away down 4th Street and Sunset Boulevard onto A1A heading south.

Jim, my guy from United Movers, had been a delight to work with. At one point, he and his partner Carlos went to lift up a marble dresser and he yelped in pain and grabbed his back. “Don’t worry,” I told him. “There’s a bottle of bourbon in the bottom drawer.” Jim smiled a Cheshire Cat grin and kept going.

You see, I thought I would feel relieved when the truck left the curb. Instead I felt nauseous. Nothing prepared me for the sense of powerlessness I felt in the following days. What if the truck fell into the Intracoastal or got caught in a tornado in Texas? Oh well, I thought, it’s in the lap of the Gods. Isn’t everything?

Camera pans forward eight days. Jim bounced out of the front of the truck blurting out: “Hey, one day early!” He was racing back to Colorado to make his daughter’s 15th birthday. We proceeded to spend the day unloading the truck. Around sunset, again, I saw the truck pulling away from the curb. Okay, now I felt that cherished sense of relief that we all seek when we’re feeing vulnerable.

Guess what? I learned a very important lesson. That feeling of relief and peace — it was false. I now know it is much easier to move out of a house than to move into one.
Check out these before and after shots! It may look like an easy transformation, but there are hours of manual labor behind these photos.

Up Next: Stay tuned for a full report on my neighbor Zack, a 6th grader, who participated in a Jog-a-Thon at the John Adams Middle School to raise money for new LCD projectors in the classrooms.