Beach House Moving - Part 1

Things I discovered while helping Kelly start to move into her new beach house:

• Kelly's sense of organization will be the death of me. She has a month to move. I suggest she move one room at a time. I wanted to clean the beach house kitchen, pack up her apartment kitchen, and unload and put away all the kitchen stuff in the beach house this weekend. Kelly wanted to move whatever boxes she had packed to store them all in the second bedroom, which will become a storage room if I don't keep an eye on that.

• People who rent places do not care if they are clean, have working parts, or are outdated. The beach house was dirty when we got the key. The kitchen cabinets hadn't been cleaned and there was still stuff left in them. The stove was plain filthy. The walls in the bedrooms were full of prints and dirt of different colors and origins. The screen in the front door was pulled out in the corner. The entire kitchen counter was warped from water damage and sags. The bottom of the cabinet in the bathroom had water damage and there was a large broken chunk missing. The outlets are a dingy yellow that does not go with the new white tiles and white walls.

• Kelly does not know how to dress properly for moving. The first day she and Darcy wore flip flops as we carried boxes of items down the rotting steep staircase to the cars. I griped about this as we hauled her wrought iron baker's rack downstairs. Of course, Kelly's flip flop curled up under her on the third step and down she went....three more stairs.

• Neighborhoods are not like they were in my childhood. There are four units in this beach building. Two up and two down. To get to Kelly's place we must walk past the first unit. The windows and door were open and we heard voices but never once did they come to the door and give a greeting. The neighbor upstairs did offer a wave as she trudged up the stairs, but only because she was caught blatantly peering into the unit at us. The mailman, Dan, however, is a friendly man who bleeds black and gold and has a beautiful tattoo on his right bicep of the Pittsburgh Steelers insignia. Alas, my camera was left back at the apartment. Dan the man mailman has promised me a photo next time he sees me.

• Kelly and I are quite capable of handling any tasks set before us. I gave Kelly a rocking glider and ottoman. To get the ottoman which was stored above my garage door on top of three boards of various sizes that my husband has laid side by side so things can be stored I had to climb on to a step ladder. I could see the ottoman cushion, but not the ottoman frame. The cushion was so far back that I could not reach it from where I stood. Kelly decided that she could get it by standing on the workbench that sits along one wall of my garage. She climbed on to bench using my shoulder and the step ladder and slowly slide her upper body between the garage door and the rung that slides the door up and down. We worried for a few seconds that she might be stuck that way forever. She was unable to reach the cushion. I got a broom and stood back on the ladder where I shoved the cushion to the side where Kelly was standing on the workbench. The cushion missed Kelly's hands but it did fall to the garage floor. Kelly got down. I then moved the ladder to the left and began to slowly hand Kelly items that were stored. Down came some fishing equipment and a piece of board. Down came a suitcase inside of a box. Behind the suitcase, far in the back, I spied the ottoman frame. I took the broom and stuck it into the bottom of the ottoman and slowly pulled it toward me. The ottoman came forth most of the way and then got stuck on one of the boards. We debated and then Kelly got a stick and pushed the first board up so that it reached the same height as the problem board. I then resumed my pulling and the ottoman came down quite nicely.

• I am seriously going to enjoy visiting Kelly in her new home. Hell, I can't wait to feed her cat. Because where else can you get this view?