Moving

I think that I am calm enough to write about this now. Robert Burns who wrote that the best laid plans of mice and men do often go awry (although he spelled it funny) must have been thinking about this past weekend.

Moving is stressful. It is an arduous task that sucks the life out of anyone. It not only means taking stuff from one place to another, but it is usually the time when that stuff is evaluated for future usefulness and either put into the "move" pile or the "toss" pile. We are an acquisition oriented society. We have lots of stuff.

The move was not a surprise for any of the participants. One son purchased a house that was standing empty and so his movement from condo to house could gracefully take it's time. No rush, no hurry. The same arduous task, but spaced out over days to weeks. Not that the time difference made the actual task easier, but the time element made the task less compact.

He is taking in a boarder at his new house and that person knew well in advance that he would be moving as well. He began to move his stuff and then inexplicably … stopped. His furniture was moved and his clothes were mostly in his new home. He was busy.

Now the best laid plans going awry part. My other son is renting the house from his brother's boarder. One person is both tenant to a son and landlord to the other son. While it may be confusing, it's just all logistics.

The son renting the house had dire time constraints. The condo he had been renting was already leased to another person. Moving wasn't going to be a casual week long affair. It needed to be as instantaneous as moving can be. On top of this, he wasn't moving a bachelor and one or two pets, but a family with three children – aged three, two, and eight months – along with the family pets – a dog, a cat, and a turtle in a 100 gallon aquarium.

Having been blessed with an active mother who helped me move twice, it was my turn to be the active mother and help move. I drove to the island intent on "getting things done." That was the plan that went awry.

I arrived on Friday morning ready to get started. The plan was to get the kitchen moved from condo to house and the beds set up in the new house and then on the next day, finish moving all the stuff. In that vein, the kitchen was packed into the van and taken to the house while I stayed put with the three kids.

Instead of a tired but motivated daughter-in-law returning for more stuff, she came in the condo and cried. The kitchen of the new house was already full of stuff. There was no room for the stuff we wanted to move in because the stuff of the landlord wasn't moved out yet. This presented a huge problem. Instead of moving at a reasonable clip and getting our plan moving forward, we were in a holding pattern.

The newly minted landlord said he would remove his stuff that evening. Great.

Saturday morning, Grandpa showed up to facilitate this whole move thing. We loaded up four vehicles because we had four drivers and hauled bunches of stuff to the new house. It was exactly as it was Friday afternoon or Wednesday afternoon or perhaps any time in the past. Every cupboard was still full. Even dishes in the dishwasher needed to be unloaded and then packed away. Some stuff was still in the closets. And the house was not only not empty, but not cleaned.

So while I packed up a kitchen for a landlord who was fully capable but too busy to do his own work, my daughter-in-law cleaned the bathrooms so that the kids could take a bath without nestling into adjectival hair that was resting in the drain. The kids were still the same age and we were still under time constraints, although at least the time became a tad longer. The new tenant for the condo wasn't moving in until Friday. We had a space to breathe again.

What should have been a two day job, and actually was a two day job, took longer because somehow I became the packing person and cleaning lady (I was in charge of cleaning the kitchen while the bathrooms were undergoing their approach to Godliness) for a person who should have done this long ago.

Since we couldn't finish packing up the landlord, cleaning up after the landlord, and actually moving in our own kids, my husband and I drove home Saturday, and then spent two hours in the car again Sunday morning driving back to finish the move. My planned four hours in the car became eight, and my planned two days became three because I was forced to do someone else's work.

And the topper, as far as I am concerned, is that my son had to pay a security deposit which is money he needed to borrow from his parents. So I wrote a check to someone for the sheer pleasure of being his slave. I've hired packers and I've hired cleaning services. Both come at a cost. It is inconceivable that this newly minted landlord could charge me for services that I've paid for in the past.

I sure hope the whole landlord thing is soon thoroughly explained to him and that he takes part of his security deposit and pays his tenants for the services they rendered to him – hours of packing and cleaning. I can send him a bill if he can't figure out a fair amount to reimburse the workers.