Mike Needs a Life Blog Reposts – Part 18

June 6, 2009
The Madness Ensues

So there we were, Christina finally had a great job… in Key West. And she started on June 8th… less than 3 weeks away. BREATHE.

Things to do within that time:

• find an apartment
• rent the house
• get rid of 2/3 of our possessions
• find a home for the cat
• finish the fence gate
• repaint the bathrooms, replace toilet seats, fix the ceiling in the hall bath, finish caulking the baseboards, etc, etc, etc…
• have a garage sale
• figure out what to do with my car – sell it, get new tires so it could make the drive, ship it to Connor??
• and oh yeah, go to the Walters’ family reunion in Savannah on the 3-day memorial day weekend

We were living in a 3 bedroom house with a shed full of tools, and a yard full of yard stuff.. a 500 lb smoker, bbq grill, chairs, tables, etc.. what the hell were we gonna do with all this stuff??? The biggest apartment we could afford in Key West was a one-bedroom, and even then the average rent for a one br is 1250 a month… and while the ultimate dream of a sailboat meant not getting too attached to stuff, practicing is harder than preaching, and we had some serious decisions to make. That and I had just gotten my porch and yard to a place where it was really, really nice.. we had spent a small fortune on that back porch and all the remodeling we did inside the house.. it was very hard to let those things go mentally. But it had to be done.

Christina found out about the job and her start date on may 18th, that gave us 3 calendar weeks to prepare, but labor day weekend was already a bust because we had to go to georgia for her family reunion, and that was a solid 3 days, so we had two weekends left. We knew that we had to go find an apartment the weekend after labor day, and that meant a whole weekend in key west.. the following weekend Christina would have to leave on Sunday at noon to get to the new place in time to get the key so she could set up the air mattress and pass out early so she could be at work bright and early Monday. That left ONE Saturday we would be at the house without interruptions, so what else to do? Have a garage sale!

Oh, and we were both still working full time until we left.. so nights were long and the days at work were spent biting fingernails and having cold-sweats. Of course our friends and families were happy for us, but also as sad for us to go as we were sad to leave them.. and they all wanted to get together, drink, have dinner, etc, etc.. time was beginning to run out faster than we could imagine. It’s a testament to our relationship that we didn’t kill each other during those 3 weeks, we had no idea what we were doing, and most decisions were made on the fly without much thought or communication.

We went down to KW the weekend after Memorial Day and looked at a few apartments, they were SMALL and had quite a bit of Key West um… flavor. One that we had seen on craigs list the week before that we really really liked apparently had someone who was going to come sign a lease that saturday so it was out. As fate would have it though, that person never showed up to sign the lease so we were able to look at it. It was by far the nicest one we looked at, and right in the part of town we’d wanted to be in.. the corner of Simonton and Flemming. One block from Duvall in the heart of ‘old town’. It became a toss up between that one and one we’d looked at earlier that was a bit larger but in a not as nice part of town.. Location won out and we signed the lease. Also fortuitously my friend Rick and his family happened to be there for some work he was doing, so we were able to hook up with them for a nice dinner and a few buckets of beer at Schooner Wharf. A great time was had by all…

We were able to rent the house amazingly enough, after only a week and a half. We had an ad on craigs list, and a sign in front of the house, the drive by people all wanted to rent for 900 bucks or so, and gawked at the 1300.00 rent, but the people from craigs list who knew what the yard and kitchen were like were much less aghast at the price. We wound up renting to a group of college girls for 1250, that covers the mortgage and taxes, so we were happy.. let’s hope they don’t have a 5-kegger and burn the place down. Luckily we are in good with most of the neighbors, and they are watching out for us.. “fingers crossed”. It is hard to imagine someone else living in a house that you’ve put so much personal and emotional energy into, but once again, I have to tell myself to let it go, it’s not something that really matters.

The garage sale itself was amazing.. we threw up a sign at 8 am, and we started carting crap out of the house, we weren’t even packed completely yet, and hadn’t decided what all we were going to try to sell. People started swarming almost immediately, Christina handled all the sales, and I was in the house taking bookshelves apart and dragging everything I could think of out to the carport. I couldn’t cart stuff out fast enough, as soon as I’d bring it out, someone would buy it.. it was unreal, and as I kept carting junk out of the house, I got a tremendous sense of liberation.. liberation from JUNK, from all the crap we hold onto that we really don’t need, stuff I hadn’t seen in years, stuff that was still in boxes from when I had moved the last time. What a great time.. and we made a pretty good profit too.. over 500 bucks. For JUNK. I love it.

I finally was able to make a decision about my car, the choices were bring it with, sell it, or store it at my moms house until Connor could use it. Blue book was 500 dollars, so it wasn’t worth a whole lot, the tires were shot, and if I was gonna take it with me, it would need 700 dollars invested for that. I checked into shipping it to Connor.. that would be at least 800 dollars.. way more than it was worth, so finally.. two days before I left I decided to sell the thing.. I love that car and I will sorely miss it, but the combined hassle and monetary input to get it to, and keep it in Key West was just too great. One more thing to try to do before I go!!

Christina spent Sunday morning packing her car with whatever we had ready to go in boxes, and left around noon. I stayed behind to finish the packing, cleaning, and so forth. I was getting the moving truck Tuesday afternoon, Christina’s Brother Josh and I would pack the truck tuesday night, and leave Wednesday morning. Seemed easy enough.