Yesterday morning a little after 6:00am Faye and I rolled out of Phoenix. Faye drove the Honda and I followed her in the moving truck. The ride went really good. Doug slept much of the time and didn’t fuss much at all. Driving into L.A. was great. It was so neat to be driving into the city we will live in with all our stuff on our backs (so to speak). I loved driving through downtown on the 101. I can’t wait to go downtown and explore. In the daytime of course. The temperature was perfect. We got off the 101 at Highland and it was just beautiful, I was smiling just feeling lucky that I get to live in such a place.
We made it to our apartment about 1:15pm and promptly signed our lease and got keys and stuff. Our help from the College ward was supposed to show up at two so we got started unloading and waited for our help. It was quite a trip to our apartment from the truck. We had to go from the street, down into the garage, onto the elevator, up two flights, down a short hallway, turn right, down a long hallway (I’m guessing 30 or 40 yards) that inconveniently had 6 steps in the middle of it, and finally to our door, the farthest possible apartment in the building from the elevator.
It would not ave been so bad except no one ever showed up to help. What would have been a two or three hour job turned into nine. There comes a point when the body is being pushed to to its physical limits that the brain stops telling you how exhausted you are by essentially shutting down all capacity except what is needed for the task at hand. That happened to me at about 5:00pm. By that point I was completely exhausted and felt like my brain was oatmeal because if I had any more function I probably would have gone crazy because of the absurdity of it all. Where was Doug you ask? On my back in the carrier. So here I am, with a baby tied to my back, pulling furniture off a moving truck and making the trek to the apartment. The best part was the stairs. Dollys and stairs and heavy furniture is simply comedic. Hours would pass and we crawled along.
We must have seen everybody who lives in this building at one time or another and had plenty of sympathizers but no offers to help. I take that back, one girl, I think her name was Kate, carried the iron for me from the elevator to the apartment. And that was all the help we got. Every last item we own was dragged into our apartment by Faye and I. There were times when my brain decided to function just enough to burst out in exhausted involuntary laughter.
Just when we had it all about done, just a few odds and ends left in the truck, Faye dropped a dinner tray and smashed her toe. It hurt her really bad, I didn’t mean to laugh, but that’s all my brain would let me do.
When we finally got done in the dark of the Hollywood night we of course could not return the truck so we found a fairly inconspicuous spot a little higher up in the hills to park the truck until this morning. The whole time we were unloading the truck was illegally parked, but no one seemed to mind except one lady who the truck didn’t really inconvenience that much.
Anyway, we collapsed into bed about 11:15pm and didn’t want to move a muscle so I didn’t write in this journal last night. Actually, I didn’t even realize I didn’t write until this morning. But, of course when we wanted nothing more in the world to fall asleep Doug wanted nothing more in the world to crawl all over us. And since we didn’t have his crib set up he got to, until Faye got fed up and put him screaming in his car seat and strapped him in. And that was the last thing I remembered until this morning when I awoke to sore muscles, especially my forearms and back, and a sea of boxes and misplaced stuff. So today we got some well deserved rest and after a late morning nap we got to work setting our place in order. And now we are going to bed again.
I forgot to mention that I tried calling the guy from the College ward and left a message for him. He finally called back around 10:00pm, but by then we were just about done and I wasn’t in much of a mood and didn’t have the mental capacity to talk. Just as we were falling into bed, there was a knock on the door and it was him. He wanted to come and apologize. Again, I wasn’t in much of a mood, and didn’t have much mental capacity to talk. But I guess in some weird way it was nice that he came over. Also, the first thing this morning we took back the truck, after than was our mid morning nap. I think that’s about it, except for the gay people and prostitutes, but I won’t get into that.
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