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Good morning and welcome to Summit Up, the world's only daily column totally stoked about moving all of our stuff, again.
Cardboard boxes labeled “Deer Horns, Coffee Mugs, Diplomas” and really heavy ones scribbled “American Fiction,” “Ammunition” and “More antlers” will be stacked and carted to yet another temporary destination.
Then there's all the stuff we don't know why we keep: old lame gifts from long-lost lovers, incomplete decks of playing cards, portraits of strangers, interesting-looking rocks.
It all gets compacted and shipped a few miles where it's again put under a bed or in a closet for a while. Knicknacks, they call these things.
We generally don't like to throw stuff away unless it's leaking or completely useless, so all kinds of in-between items hang around like stray back hairs. They're not really bothersome, but not serving too much of any purpose — and not worth the pain of plucking.
Case in point: a terribly tacky pair of lobster-embroidered, pastel-blue shorts that come up too high above the knee for someone who doesn't shave the legs.
We accepted them with an awkward chuckle from a real gem of an ex.
The shorts have followed us through two American states and a whopping nine moves in five years. That's nearly a move every six months.
We have moved out of whimsy, but the decision usually has more to do with oddball housemates, financial issues or job opportunities.
***
We've got some time and space — integral facets to anyone's relative perception — so we'll give a run-down of just what sort of stars aligned to place us amid a few of the more obtuse gaps in our very own continuum:
• The townhouse with the gloomy Goth guy who played video games, slept and sometimes groaned.
We terminated this lease after coming home to piercing heavy metal music on the computer with our speakers, some car racing X-Box game idling at full volume, all the lights on and our roomie fast asleep on the couch as a murky liquid spilled from his jaw on a pillow.
• The duplex with the morbidly obese intellectual and convicted felon who manipulated our minds into feeling guilty that he never did the dishes.
The lease was terminated shortly after the weekend he ordered “Gilmore Girls” on Netflix and left half a meat lover's pizza to rot in a drawer.
• The modular (fake) home with the vicious Siamese cat who bit and scratched us every time we got too close.
• The shoebox-style apartment with a window at either end, neighbors who pounded rhythmically above our heads late at night — despite our angry screams and curses — and a kitchen like something in a child's crummy play fort.
• Oh, and of course there was that college apartment with the cracked windows housing bird nests in the panes and pipes that froze.
But what got us moving out of there was more the cracked-out handyman who would burst through the door asking us to hide him from the cops at all hours of the night. His manner was off-putting.
***
Factors such as these make the strenuous labor that often involves renting a damn U-Haul seem not so bad.
Like even though getting our fancy love seat through a door at the top of a narrow staircase was tougher than a large jigsaw puzzle, we felt all the more relieved once it was securely stowed.
Our latest move involved the bumming of a co-worker's truck for a morning to move all the big furniture.
The knicknacks, boxes and bags will be trucked via SUV until alas we're ready to go begin unpacking, nailing up pictures and blah, blah, blah.
***
Before we let you go, we'd like to share a revelation regarding virginity.
For years we'd never understood what made our olive oil extra virgin.
The color seemed about the same as the others, and the flavor was good, so we never really bothered buying any that wasn't extra virgin.
Virgin to us is pure, flawless, unsullied (our personal favorite), unpolluted, undefiled and pretty much untouched.
So speculation regarding our cooking lubricant led to visions of juice extracted with the least disturbance to the olive's precious contour, or maybe grown in some controlled space-age environment.
Heck, it could have meant the use of high-frequency sounds, static electricity and ultraviolet light and we'd still buy it.
Alas, it means the oil was extracted through the first pressing of the olives. We weren't even close.
***
It's Sunday and we just dropped a box full of extra virgin olive oil on our soiled, sandaled toe.
Now that we're moving into a home with actual running water, we can wash our stinky feet.
Cardboard boxes labeled “Deer Horns, Coffee Mugs, Diplomas” and really heavy ones scribbled “American Fiction,” “Ammunition” and “More antlers” will be stacked and carted to yet another temporary destination.
Then there's all the stuff we don't know why we keep: old lame gifts from long-lost lovers, incomplete decks of playing cards, portraits of strangers, interesting-looking rocks.
It all gets compacted and shipped a few miles where it's again put under a bed or in a closet for a while. Knicknacks, they call these things.
We generally don't like to throw stuff away unless it's leaking or completely useless, so all kinds of in-between items hang around like stray back hairs. They're not really bothersome, but not serving too much of any purpose — and not worth the pain of plucking.
Case in point: a terribly tacky pair of lobster-embroidered, pastel-blue shorts that come up too high above the knee for someone who doesn't shave the legs.
We accepted them with an awkward chuckle from a real gem of an ex.
The shorts have followed us through two American states and a whopping nine moves in five years. That's nearly a move every six months.
We have moved out of whimsy, but the decision usually has more to do with oddball housemates, financial issues or job opportunities.
***
We've got some time and space — integral facets to anyone's relative perception — so we'll give a run-down of just what sort of stars aligned to place us amid a few of the more obtuse gaps in our very own continuum:
• The townhouse with the gloomy Goth guy who played video games, slept and sometimes groaned.
We terminated this lease after coming home to piercing heavy metal music on the computer with our speakers, some car racing X-Box game idling at full volume, all the lights on and our roomie fast asleep on the couch as a murky liquid spilled from his jaw on a pillow.
• The duplex with the morbidly obese intellectual and convicted felon who manipulated our minds into feeling guilty that he never did the dishes.
The lease was terminated shortly after the weekend he ordered “Gilmore Girls” on Netflix and left half a meat lover's pizza to rot in a drawer.
• The modular (fake) home with the vicious Siamese cat who bit and scratched us every time we got too close.
• The shoebox-style apartment with a window at either end, neighbors who pounded rhythmically above our heads late at night — despite our angry screams and curses — and a kitchen like something in a child's crummy play fort.
• Oh, and of course there was that college apartment with the cracked windows housing bird nests in the panes and pipes that froze.
But what got us moving out of there was more the cracked-out handyman who would burst through the door asking us to hide him from the cops at all hours of the night. His manner was off-putting.
***
Factors such as these make the strenuous labor that often involves renting a damn U-Haul seem not so bad.
Like even though getting our fancy love seat through a door at the top of a narrow staircase was tougher than a large jigsaw puzzle, we felt all the more relieved once it was securely stowed.
Our latest move involved the bumming of a co-worker's truck for a morning to move all the big furniture.
The knicknacks, boxes and bags will be trucked via SUV until alas we're ready to go begin unpacking, nailing up pictures and blah, blah, blah.
***
Before we let you go, we'd like to share a revelation regarding virginity.
For years we'd never understood what made our olive oil extra virgin.
The color seemed about the same as the others, and the flavor was good, so we never really bothered buying any that wasn't extra virgin.
Virgin to us is pure, flawless, unsullied (our personal favorite), unpolluted, undefiled and pretty much untouched.
So speculation regarding our cooking lubricant led to visions of juice extracted with the least disturbance to the olive's precious contour, or maybe grown in some controlled space-age environment.
Heck, it could have meant the use of high-frequency sounds, static electricity and ultraviolet light and we'd still buy it.
Alas, it means the oil was extracted through the first pressing of the olives. We weren't even close.
***
It's Sunday and we just dropped a box full of extra virgin olive oil on our soiled, sandaled toe.
Now that we're moving into a home with actual running water, we can wash our stinky feet.
