Pros and Cons of The Big Move, Part 1

After eleven years of living in Quincy, I finally decided to bite the bangers and mash and move. I am now an official resident of Somerville, MA. The move made a heckuva lot of sense for me. I spend three or four of my nights in Somerville or Cambridge in one Square or another. And I work in Waltham. The only thing that had kept me from moving until now was the thought of packing up 11 years worth of crap and that I suffer from a debilitating bout of chronic laziness. But, when a friend of mine was moving out of her apartment, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to snag her digs. Before I could talk myself out of it with visions of cardboard boxes and treks to the dumpster and thoughts of what could potentially be growing underneath my love seat, I signed the lease and moved last week.

During my move, I discovered that there were pros and cons of moving. I'll start with the cons and get my complaining out of the way:

Cons of moving from Quincy to Somerville after 11 years

1.) Going through the afore-mentioned 11 years of crap. When you've lived in the same place for 11 years straight, you amass a lot of stuff that you haven't looked at in 11 years. I'm not exaggerating when I tell you that I made twenty-two trips to the dumpster behind my building and three trips to goodwill. And I STILL had a ton of junk left over, enough so that I received disapproving looks from my movers when they arrived on Monday morning, and I had to hide my head in shame like a coned puppy.

In a cabinet that I clearly had not opened in the past 8 years, I found a stocked-disgusting-liquor-that-I-hate stash.

Triple Sec, yuck. Orange Stoli, blech. I think there's even a cup o'noodles in there in the back? My sister, Lori, was kind of enough to throw it all in the trash.

2.) Finding scary bottles of goo. Speaking of disgusting things in cabinets, I also found a bottle of brown goo that used to be ketchup. The sell-by date was 2008. I didn't look that closely, or take a picture because I was having trouble keeping my noodles down, and I'm sorry for that because I bet that you're all wondering what 2008 ketchup looks like.

3.) Dropping your keys down an elevator shaft. This last one might not be a con related to EVERYONE's move, but it sure was a con of mine. At the end of move-in day, after three straight days of packing and moving, I was so tired that I was having trouble getting my body to do what my brain wanted it to do. My very last job of the day was to go to my old apartment in Quincy and clean out all of the trash that we had left that day. As my parents and I were walking down the hall to the elevator, I walked right into the fire extinguisher box on the wall. My parents laughed at me because they're super sympathetic. My mom made the statement, "In 11 years of living here, have you ever done that before?" And I laughed and said no and turned back around toward the elevator. As I turned, just as my dad opened the elevator door, my car keys dropped out of my hand and rolled toward the crevice between the elevator floor and the hall.The three of us watched with horror as the car key slipped right through the crack into the darkness below. Now, this would upset someone who had just been to Disney World, rode Splash Mountain five times in a row, watched the Electric Light parade, sang along to It's a Small World and oooh-ed and aaaah-ed at the fireworks exploding over Cinderella's castle. To someone who had just been through one of the most exhausting days of her life, it was too much to handle. And I had a meltdown.

During my meltdown, my poor parents who were just as tired as I was, tried to offer helpful suggestions. Call the landlord! (Didn't answer.) Call the fire department! (Sad that I was crying but couldn't help). We finally decided that my dad would drive me to Somerville where I could get the spare (luckily, I knew right where I had packed it!) and then back down to Quincy to get my car. So, that's what we did. By the time that we got back to Quincy, it was after midnight. I thanked my parents for all of their help and said goodbye and watched them drive away. With a sigh, I went over to my car in the parking lot, pressed the alarm button on the key and watched...as nothing happened. Apparently, if you haven't used the spare remote control key in a while, the transmitter dies on you.

Anyway, I had enough wits about me to try to get a new battery. (Didn't work.) Call my sister who lives in the same apartment building as my old apartment (Offered to drive me to Somerville and sleep over so that I could feed my cat). And try the manual key without the remote control. (Tripped the alarm).

After saying farewell to my neighbors with three trips of the car alarm at 1 a.m., we finally figured out how to start my car with the manual key. I was able to go to the dealer the next day and get a new transmitter. And that, my friends, was my last day in Quincy.

Stay tuned next post for the Pros of the Big Move and why, after all this, I'm psyched that I made it!