I have devised a new workout plan that I recommend to everyone.
1. Have and raise a child. (This part takes a while, stick with it.)
2. Allow child to get an apartment at college so as to facilitate the accumulation of a lifetime's worth of crap and heavy furniture in four years.
3. Place all said belongings in storage after college and allow child to move home to find a job, save some money, and get established.
4. Wait 4 years for said child to "find herself."
5. (And here's where it gets good) At long last celebrate child's location of suitable grown up apartment. Do happy dance. Rent a truck, return to storage unit, load truck with 120 rooms of heavy furniture, boxes of books, boxes of what appear to be bricks, kitchen stuff, more lamps than can be found in a furniture store, what appear to be more bricks, and misc crap, all destined for a one bedroom basement apartment.
6. Arrive at apartment to find it flooded, less than a week after signing the lease. Call weekend emergency maintenance number, wait for plumber, and learn that the problem may be in a wall and will take up to a week to fully rectify. Reject idea of jumping out of window. It's a basement.
7. After laughing, then crying, then looking for the nearest liquor store, drive truck back to self-storage, unload everything including the bricks which appear to have been breeding in the truck because there are now four times as many. Find out that just because everything came out of the storage locker doesn't mean it all will to be easily fit back in again. Apparently bricks like sunlight.
8. Return truck, return home, and realize that part of what went into the storage locker was daughter's bed. Reluctantly agree to sleep on couch for a week.
9. Lie awake thinking that you have to do it all again next Saturday.
And voila! a 1200 calorie-burn workout. (Not including the have and raise a child part, that burns even more.)
Somebody pass the Ben-Gay.
oh, Darlin' Boy!! What an awful thing!! I FEEL for you---after Eleven times of onward-and-upward since our marriage twenty-five years ago, I cannot hear or speak the "M" word without going fetal.
ReplyDeleteAnd only 1200 calories? Pish-Tush. That must have been enough points to encompass a whole Weight-Watchers meeting, plus the burnout from a Rodeo Drive gym with determined STARS.
Oh. My.
And you had me giggling---and I do not giggle lightly at printed material. But your way with words, the painting of that hopeless, ongoing picture of the multiplying bricks and the frustrated defenestration---you are just a HOOT, you are.
And does not that "flooded" part somehow negate the lease you signed on a nice dry abode? I don't understand these real estate things---my only expertise would come from midnight House Hunters International, and you know the Two Million-dollar-budget- for-a-vacation-home set that I run with there.
And, pray---where were all those lovely friends with the glorious wardrobes when you need them?
I can only commisserate, and hope that you're not too STOVE UP today. I'm so sorry for your troubles and the unfruitful work, but I wouldn't have missed this for anything!
love and,
Well said Dad, though admittedly there was only one brick, but many, many large boxes of books that should have been many, many, many small boxes of books.
ReplyDeleteRachel, sadly I get to sit around and hope that perhaps someday my landlord will say, "By the way, your rent is discounted this month." The lovely friend with fabulous wardrobes you refer to were all busy and concerned about strain and its potential affects on their stage performances--actresses, typical!
You could tell the landlord that the loss of use of the space means your rent is prorated for the month. Most of them hope you wont think of it, but its not like they can really argue it. Go to library, get book on tenant's rights. Buy your dad a beer!
ReplyDeleteI laughed out loud at 'Apparently bricks like sunlight'. Am still laughing.
Been there, done that. Gack. :)
Maybe your bricks are really like GREMLINS.
ReplyDeleteThis time, try not to get them wet!
I felt REALLY low on Saturday night - exhausted and disappointed for The Child. Then I read what Mr. Kim wrote on Sunday morning and laughed and felt better. With these wonderful responses, my recovery is complete! Thank you all!
ReplyDeleteH'mmm. Do you think you're in danger of prosecution for promoting lewd and lascivious behavior for what those bricks were doing out there in the sunlight, in front of God and everybody?
ReplyDeleteI sympathize. I have 67 boxes of books (at last move), some of which I've been hauling around for 30 years. I can no longer draft friends to help me move.
Kay - Oh, books! I think that they commit those lewd and lascivious acts, too, because they seem to multiply like bunnies. Every few months, I go through them and donate bagsful to the library. Then, of course, the library has a sale and I buy more than I donated. I am incorrigible.
ReplyDeleteNo one can be accounted incorrigible for buying books. Musical instruments, yes. Books, absolutely not. I am at the point in life that I forget what I read, so can re-read a book several weeks or months later and enjoy it just as much. Nice, but I still buy more books. I have the excuse that I am the main supplier for my mother, who loves to read, so I have to keep her happy, right?
ReplyDeleteHope Mr. Kim has recovered by now, and The Child is safely in her own abode.
Thank you, Chesapeake - I'm glad to have a 'book buddy'! I was so disappointed to realize that I had missed the library book sale this past weekend and I think that I caught a relieved look on Mr. Kim's face!
ReplyDeleteMr Kim sure has a way with words. I enjoyed it so much that I took my laptop over to Mr James (that's what he was called in Singapore and I was Mrs James) and he said: have two girls and know what he is talking about! Thanks for sharing.
ReplyDeleteHe's a wonderful writer - as is The Child!
ReplyDelete