Saturday, July 23, 2005 AD A Moving Tale My friends are so good to me. When I was in the throes of moving a few months ago, my friend Joan let me store a whole buncha stuff in her basement. When it became apparent last weekend that I needed to get it all out of there ASAP (dampness had caused mildew, and some things were already ruined), I sent out an all-CREC e-mail requesting moving muscle. At about 7:15 this morning four kind gentlemen -- Jeff, Brandon and Tyler A., and Mike M. -- showed up with two sizeable vehicles to tackle to job.
But no good deed goes unpunished. As Jeff was parallel parking Brandon's car, some brilliant fellow-denizen of my fair metropolis decided he couldn't be patient enough to wait out the process, and pulled around, managing to side-swipe the vehicle. Happily, he hadn't done much damage to Bran's car, but of course I felt bad that here they were helping me and suffering this hassle as a result. Especially when all three A's started yelling at me, "We wish you'd gone ahead and moved to Virginia!" OK, so I completely made up that last bit.
The gents made quick work of it, hauling everything from the basement to the front yard and organizing it into the two tanks...er...SUVs. We were back at my house a few minutes past 8, when the phone rang. Oops. I hadn't realized that the key Joan left me wasn't a spare, but her only means of reentry to her home. I couldn't rush right back, since they'd just started unloading, so I asked her to give me half an hour. And the guys were so efficient with unloading (I was waiting for someone to pronounce "fragile" in the proper way. Mike was the one to finally oblige. Must be leading all those trips to Europe for Rockbridge that's made him fluent in Italian) that I was actually able to make it back there that quickly. But oh ye of little faith! Joan wasn't there. Had gone to run an errand, I suppose. I couldn't get the key to work again, so I sat down on her porch to wait, and pulled out my Bible and started reading some Psalms. I'd made it through 23 (sung that one, actually), 53 and 83 when I thought, "I think I'll try the key again." So I stood up to do that, and there was Joan sitting in her car, out of sight behind a hedge, waiting for me.
We quickly discovered that the reason I couldn't open the door is that I'd turned the knob, which isn't connected to the bolt, for which I have a key, but to an old lock that isn't quite defunct enough. Joan, having been through this before, disassembled the knob and started poking with her key to disengage the lock. The key wasn't quite long enough, so I went to my car to find something that might work. I looked in the trunk, and in a couple plastic bins in the back seat (I hadn't let the guys unload my car because I didn't want to take the time before heading back to Joan's). I was still hunting when Joan yelled, "I wish you'd gone ahead and moved to Virginia!" Er...I mean...I was still hunting when Joan yelled, "I got it open!"
I came in for a drink of water, we chatted for a bit, met her new sort-of next-door neighbor (he bought the house where Jocelyn and Greg used to live, but he's planning to rent it out), and then I left to head home. Only when I got to my car I couldn't find my glasses. I'd taken them off when I sat on the porch to read. They weren't in my purse (which I searched three times). They weren't in Joan's house. They weren't in the front seat of my car. They weren't in the trunk. I was just about to sit down and cry, "I wish I'd gone ahead and moved to Virginia!" (no, not really), when finally, on our third search of the plastic bins in the back seat, I found them. I'd evidently hooked them to the front of my shirt while I was reading, and then they'd fallen off into the bin when I was hunting for something to help open the door.
We then decided to go out to breakfast. Joan recommended Pete's Grille -- evidently yet another of those Baltimore landmarks I've never heard of -- so we drove there, parked, fed the meter, and discovered that the place was closed for vacation. We ended up instead at Dunkin' Donuts, where we ate without further incident.
My friends are so good to me. I'm glad I didn't go ahead and move to Virginia! Posted by Valerie (Kyriosity) at 7/23/2005 05:11:00 PM
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