Stuff

I'm not good at watching movies, so people like to explain storylines to me.  This is fine and saves me a substantial amount of time.  In a conversation about whether or not possessions matter, my friend Pete told me about some plot in some movie where the guy gets super attached to his volleyball and names him. (You don't all have to comment to tell me which movie.  I don't care.)  It sounds stupid.

I like to think I care about stuff less than most people. I move too much and have been too poor for too long to have nice things.  Every few years I whittle down to my favorite/most useful things so I can move.  Also, I lose/break things on a regular basis. But when the Public Defender offered to pay to move all of my stuff to Alaska, I took them up on it.  Sounded fun.

I want to insert a warning here to anyone who might hire a California-based moving company: DON'T GO WITH "NOW THAT'S A GOOD MOVE."  It isn't.  I won't rant here about every single thing they did wrong... just don't do it.

Anyway, I thought I'd get my stuff after two weeks (because they lied), but it took six weeks. So there I was, after six weeks,  sitting on my living room floor surrounded by files and trying to work because moving company could only come during office hours. A big truck pulled up and a little man came out.  Just one little man.  I wondered how he was planning to carry all of my stuff by himself, so I asked him. As it turns out, he was only authorized to leave my stuff in my snowy driveway.  Because I am even less capable of bringing all of my stuff inside alone than that little man, I refused to sign and made him leave. He was pissed.

The thing about being new is that even though you're forming new friendships, you don't have people you feel comfortable asking to drop their lives to do an annoying favor (like help you carry stuff inside out of the snow because you didn't have the foresight to ask ahead of time whether this was covered in your moving expenses).  I really don't have any favors to call in here. So I called a temp agency, priced the job, then called the moving company to reschedule the shipment.

The moving company told me that there were two men at my apartment to help me move.  There weren't.  They insisted.  I went outside to look for them.  I couldn't find them.  I came back inside and tried to figure out what to do. Then two large scary-looking guys knocked on my door.  They were there to help me move.  The moving company had apparently contracted a shipping company and a temp agency without telling any of the three parties. (me.  I'm the third one.)

I invited the guys in out of the snow and called the moving company, who confirmed that that's who the guys were (not just random large people lost in the snow). The guy with the truck couldn't come back for another hour.  So, I made the guys some coffee and toast and we all sat on the living room floor and told stories.  As it turns out, they were convicted felons so we had a lot to talk about!  I really wanted to take pictures of them for the pending blog, but couldn't figure out how to do it without being offensive. Their largeness really emphasized the smallness of my living room. Eventually, the truck came back, the men unloaded it, and we all lived happily ever after.

Anyway, even though I had a lovely morning with these guys, I was thinking by the end of the ordeal that I wish I hadn't shipped anything at all.  It was all such a hassle, and my stuff really isn't worth anything.  But then, I saw him: my pet dragon.  I have a giant pet dragon that the best person I know once won for me at a fair (after $65 and a relentless ball-throwing match with a fair worker).  When I carried that dragon around the fair, little kids kept approaching me to pet him.  He's that huge and exciting.

Then, I saw the sparkly sombrero that was given to me to remind me that I'll always be the honorary Mexican of my urban tribe back in California. My dragon loves that sombrero.  So I took my sombrero and put him back on my dragon's head, where he belongs. When my giant Mexi-dragon smiled up at me in appreciation of being hatted, I felt like I was reunited with an old friend.  I couldn't believe how happy I was to see him.

I might as well have named him Wilson.