It’s time to say goodbye
– Everything is an Adventure: Column by Julia Wolf –
The last five years, have gone by exceptionally quickly. It seems like not all that long ago, that my family pulled up to my Cornell apartment, with a truck so loaded down with furniture, that we earned those curious and concerned looks from passersby. Now, the time has come to do it all again.
After seven and a half years of dating my boyfriend, Brett, most of which were long-distance, we are finally moving to the same city. He recently started a business in Winona, Minn., which is much closer to me and my family than where he was in Nebraska. I told him, that if he moves the 10 hours from his family, I will move the extra hour and a half farther from mine.
If you have read my columns, you know even the simplest things seem to go hilariously wrong for me. Somehow, Brett has even worse luck than I do. At least it makes for a good story.
Apartment hunting turned into house hunting this spring, and we ended up finding a house in a college neighborhood to rent. Brett made a quick, three-day trip, to Winona, in June. He still hasn’t left from that three-day trip, and now, his business is open, so he won’t be back to Nebraska, to actually pack up his stuff, for at least a few more weeks.
One thing neither one of us had, was a couch. So, we planned a weekend together, to try to find the furnishings for our living room, figuring it would make Brett’s surprisingly long stay more comfortable. We found immediate success at a second-hand furniture store, bought the couch, placed it on hold and went to Menards to rent a pick-up truck to haul it.
Upon our return to the store, we each grabbed a side of the couch and carried it out. Naturally, we almost knocked something over while carrying the couch and probably would’ve finished the job, had an employee not caught it. Apparently, we are sneaky, because none of the other shoppers seemed to notice the two people with the heavy couch, until we were right beside them, saying excuse me. Still, I would say moving the couch to the house went smoothly. It even walked right into the upstairs hallway of our house easily.
When we came back from returning the truck, we tried to carry the couch to the basement, where our living room is. Tried, was the key word there. Despite the high ceiling and wide stairwell at the top of the steps, the handrail and door at the bottom of the steps are quite narrow. The couch was thoroughly stuck and it became clear that no amount of maneuvering was going to get that couch in the basement. So, we laughed and I took a picture of the couch jammed in the stairwell, with Brett smiling below. Ah, those lovely moving memories.
Plan B then went into effect. We were going to have an upstairs sitting room in one of the bedrooms. Well, after taking the decorative wood backing and legs off the couch, and the door, door hinges and the door trim off the door frame (which involved three additional trips to Menards for tools, bringing our daily total to five trips), we learned that the hall was too narrow to get a couch in that room, because the couch hit the top of the door frame, even though the couch was narrower than the doorway.
As a last ditch effort, I suggested trying to get the couch in the master bedroom. It walked right in.
It is a really comfy couch, but we never wanted to move another couch after that experience. So, we decided that 5 p.m. was not too late to go to IKEA, and try to find a flat-packed couch for the basement.
We got hailed on during our drive to the store, which slowed us down. Then, we weren’t in love with any of the medium-sized couches and ended up buying a three-piece couch, with a chaise. Why we didn’t sit on the display couch and order it shipped to our house from our phones, I have no idea.
The wheel wells in my car were the deciding factor that one of the three boxes containing the couch would need to ride home on top my car. Tying the couch section on took an hour, then, the ropes loosened about a half hour into the drive. No stores were open to buy more tie-downs that late at night, and the two gas stations we checked didn’t carry anything. We ended up finding more rope, but still had to drive slow, between the load and the foggy conditions. We got home at 1:30 a.m., then took a half hour to carry the section of couch on the roof of the car, inside. It turns out, 5 p.m. was indeed too late to leave for couch shopping.
That couch did fit in the basement and looks nice, though. The moving since then has gone considerably better, but it should probably be reiterated that Brett has not started moving yet.
As difficult, physically, as moving can be, the hardest part for me is saying goodbye. Thank you for trusting me with your stories over the past five years, and counting me as a member of your wonderful communities. I’m sure I’ll be back in the area, from time to time (after all, I have friends here now), so don’t be afraid to say hi if you see me around. Cheers to the next chapter!
