April 16, 2007
We've settled into our new home, one half of a little house behind a house (and have started referring to any failed first endeavor as "a 1357 1/2," the number for the House of Jerks). We rented a U-Haul and moved our stuff in one big load, and then made a loop through Glendale and Burbank (suburbs of suburbs) to pick up a Craigslist sectional sofa and $40 refrigerator.
Why did we need a refrigerator?, you Midwesterners and East Coasters may ask. Good question! But there's no good answer. In LA, landlords often do not supply refrigerators or stoves. We were lucky to get a stove, but for a fridge, we were on our own. Apparently people cart their appliances around from apartment to apartment out here. I've been told that the rights are heavily on the side of the renter, in LA, so maybe this is the Landlord's Revenge.
We stopped first to pick up the beige sectional sofa and chair, for $100, from a lady in Burbank. I'd called about it that morning, leaning on our new kitchen counter (not a roommate in sight to scrutinize my actions), where my computer was picking up a wireless signal.
"Hello," an unenthused male voice answered.
"Hi, I'm calling about the sofa for sale on Craigslist?" I tried to be chipper.
"Hold on," he said, and then I heard him shouting gruffly, "Someone about that sofa you're giving away for a hundred bucks." I grinned. A woman with a raspy voice but a pleasant demeanor came to the phone, seemed excited to have a call about it, gave me the address, and said we could have a matching chair, for free, if we wanted it.
When we arrived at their little bungalow, a For Sale sign nestled in with flowers, a miniature fence along a stone path to the door, she answered the door in pink and beige grandma finery.
Her son, a behemoth of a man with geek glasses and a polo tee shirt, carried most of the thing out to the U-Haul for us.
"Oh, gosh, that's okay, we can --" I started to object, and then just stopped when I saw him toss a third of the sofa on his shoulder like it was made of styrofoam.
I chatted up Grandma, about having just moved here, about California, about moving in general. She explained they were moving to Arizona, and were getting rid of as much as they could. I asked about a couple of pretty wood tables, but she said no, we're keeping those.
"You're taking the pillows, I assume?" I asked about the nice new throw pillows that had been on the sofa.
"Yeah, we're keeping those," she said.
Her son came back for another round of hefting, and Mark helped him this time. Not because the chair was too heavy for him, but because the weight of expectation upon his gender outweighed the furniture by a landslide.
"Oh, you know what, you take them," Grandma said to me, smiling, and patting me on the back.
"Really?" I said, smiling, "Are you sure?"
"Oh yeah, you take them. I'm glad you got the sofa," she said conspiratorially, handing me the pillows.
The last pieces of furniture were stowed in the U-Haul, and Mark and I thanked Grandma and her son profusely.
"Oh, I'm so glad you got the sofa," she said again. We liked her, too.
"Me too!" I effused.
We hopped in the truck, and continued our loop, this time for the fridge.
It turned out to be pretty ugly, even for a refrigerator, but hey, it worked and was $40, so we loaded it, with the guy's help, on its side, on the back of the truck. It was heavy. I was not sure how this was going to work out on the other end, without help or a dolly.But burn that bridge when we come to it, I thought, and hopped back in the truck, navigating the cul-de-sacs like a pro, winding our way back to our new home.
Mark was tired and starting to fade, by the time we got there. But we had to unload the truck and return it, so we got to it. We got the fridge out of the truck and onto the street, without too much ado. But this was not going to be easy.
"I dunno, Mark, I don't think we can carry this thing." I said.
"Sure we can; I carried tons of fridges at Burnside," the apartment complex he used to work at.
Mark then tried to heave the heavy side up from the ground, and got it up a couple feet, but clearly was not walking anywhere with it.
"Put it down put it down!" I said, seeing him strain.
He put it down.
"You okay?" I asked.
"...Yeah," he grumbled. I was pretty sure he must've pulled something, even if he didn't know it yet, or didn't want to know it yet.
"Okay... This is an older fridge than you've probably moved," I pondered.
"I forgot, we had a dolly at work," he said.
"I think we're just going to have to do a sort of tip and walk thing. Kinda slowly spin it, you know?"
We started in on it: tipping it up, spinning it around, putting it down. It was slow and annoying.
"We're going to tear up the grass," Mark said when we neared the lawn. I got some cardboard and tried to make a path. The cardboard kept slipping out of the way, or hitting our feet while we tried to spin the Monster Fridge.
"This is ridiculous!" Mark lost his cool. I had no rebuttal. It was ridiculous.
But suddenly, from nowhere it seemed, 3 men appeared, a father and his two sons, the father explaining in broken English and the universal language of refrigerator-hoisting gesture that they could help us.
The five of us tipped and lifted the thing up, up, up the little set of stairs, into the house, into the kitchen, in no time.
"Thank you!" Mark and I said."That was amazing!" I said.
"No problem," Dad said. "We leve across the street, juss over there. An my seester leves nes'door," he said.
"Oh, nice! Yeah, I think I met her this morning," I said. She'd stopped to introduce herself. Dad offered to help with the sofa, too, but we said no no, we could get it.
"I'm strong!" I said, striking a silly flexing pose. They laughed.
"Okay, you let us know, you need more help," he said. His teenage sons stood shifting from foot to foot.
"Thank you so much," I said, shaking hands with each of them. They filed out, saying goodbye.
"That was awesome!" Mark said. "I think this neighborhood is, like, all families."
We loaded the sofa into the house, easy by comparison, and collapsed onto it, tired but happy. Our new house was so airy and cute and Ours.
That night, we made dinner and watched an episode of "Battlestar Gallactica" on my computer. I got up to get some water from the kitchen, and felt odd for a moment.
I turned to Mark.
"Hey! Look at me! Look at me going from the living room to the kitchen to get water -- with No One Watching Me!!" I said, realizing the wonder of having our own place, a douchebag-free-zone, of being unwatched.
"Yay!" Mark said from the sofa, and held out his arms for a hug. I walked over with my water, set it down on our collapsable little table, and curled up in his arms.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
(one month in -- no posters yet:)
