July was a much busier month than any month during summer vacation has a right to be. Mostly due to the big move back to Sacramento after over four years of stagnating up north in the Yuba-Sutter area. (As the ’90s playlist series demonstrates, I’ve already stagnated there once before in my high school/college years.) I’ve spent the last two of those years stuck in Marysville, the town that literally can’t grow (I’ll explain why in the next entry.) Now I can at least stagnate in a place that has decent bookstores.
Moving house isn’t fun in the best of times, but it’s especially enervating during the hottest week of the year thus far, on average. (July 15-22, 2009, look it up.) There were times at the end of the day when my clothes looked like I had jumped in a pool. My raging taste for alcohol subsided, and was replaced with an obsession with Wild Cherry Pepsi Super Big Gulps (I must have had two dozen in five days.) I wasn’t moving a glass menagerie and little lace doilies, either. My “stuff” consists of about 400,000 pounds worth of CDs, DVDs, and the Movers’ Bane: books. I am a literate and highly well-read fellow, and that comes with a price beyond a simple loss of social skills – it means every time you move, you have to box up all those goddamn books, and, well…move them, as the term implies. And nothing weighs more than a box full of books, with the possible exception of a fully filled tropical aquarium.
And most of that stuff I moved by myself. It wasn’t until I got to the furniture that I had to call in reinforcements – namely WH and RF, who gamely assisted me in squeezing a 35-inch wide couch through a 33½-inch wide door. (It only landed directly on WH’s hand once, and I’m told he’s healing nicely, with almost full mobility regained.)
“Next time, we’re just going to heave it over the back fence and bring it through the sliding glass door,” I panted to WH as we collapsed at the conclusion of the ordeal.
“No. You’re never moving again, asshole,” was WH’s response. (I inferred the “asshole” from his tone.)
Once everything was pretty much in its place, the next order of business was hitting the store to get all the things you need to replace when you move. New toilet brush, new broom, some hooks, some lightbulbs…and I have never felt as gay as I did standing there trying to determine which fuzzy toilet seat cover/bathmat set to buy. “Just because I’m straight doesn’t mean I have to live like a savage” became my official motto of the day as I went off to explore house plants and throw rugs.
Then the cable guy came to hook up my TV and internet. He wasn’t the jovial, wisecracking, sleeveless redneck I had come to expect from the portrayals of cable guys in the popular media. No, my cable guy was a bitter, eye-rolling quasi-sophisticate of about 23, vibrating with barely suppressed rage, and he clearly believed that his recent college degree entitled him to a life that didn’t include crawling around in the privet hedges outside my townhouse. Clearly, I should be the one mucking in the shrubbery, and he should be deciding on throw rugs. (Things are tough all over, Rob From AT&T, and maybe someday you’ll go far. But not with that attitude.)
The first cable guy did not have what was required in his magic van, and promised to return the next day. Anyone familiar with cable guy promises knows that he had no intention of returning without my calling and making a second appointment. Which I did. The situation required a second and third visit from Cable Guy #2, the altogether more amiable Eduardo, who spent much of his time gleefully bad-mouthing Rob.
With the computer finally set to go, I discovered that the copious notes I made on the next entry of This Used To Be My Playground had not been saved before I shut down and packed up. So, until I’m motivated enough to start the entry from scratch, I’ve decided to pay a little tribute to the city I’m leaving behind. Watch for The Holy Bee Presents MARYSVILLE: Then & Now to pop up here, perhaps later today, perhaps tomorrow.
Holy Bee of Ephesus 