Moving On Up…To The Cheap Side!

By Roger Dudek

August 13, 2009 | Issue 45•33

Well, hello there, loyal readers. So good of you to drop by. Please, won't you step into the foyer? Or at least point to it and tell me where it is? Because I haven't the slightest clue! You guessed it, it's moving day 'round the Dudek household. Rosemary and I sold our house and found a smaller place to match my smaller paychecks. And it's a good thing, too. Right now our budget is stretched thinner than Joan Rivers' forehead. (And that's thin!)

Now, I'll admit, moving has never been one of my favorite activities. In fact, on the list of things I enjoy doing, it would rank somewhere between eating chalk and getting a root canal at the DMV. Thankfully, there are people you can pay to pack up all your belongings, place them carefully in a truck, and transport everything to your new home, safe and sound, without a scratch on them.

Or, you can do what I did, and hire movers!

I'm not saying the movers were clumsy. That would be an understatement. What I am saying is that they broke more things than the National Enquirer. These two characters (who shall remain nameless, in case they read this column and decide to do to my face what they did to the dresser!) showed up at my house three hours late and started tossing around boxes like they were in a touring production of Cirque du So-Sorry-I-Dropped-That. The boxes that did arrive at the new house looked as if they'd spent the last 7 years fighting for Haitian independence, and I'm pretty sure our couch wasn't always a sectional.

Frankly, I was shocked. I thought I'd hired movers—not shakers. Yikes! These guys give a new meaning to the phrase "apartment broker." As in, "Is this apartment broker than I remember? I think it is!"

So imagine my surprise when Rosemary insisted I stop jotting down notes and give the movers a tip. My jaw almost hit the linoleum! They broke all our stuff, and now they want a tip? Well, I've got a tip for you: Hang up the back brace, fellas. You guys are wasting your natural talents as demolitions experts. Between the two of you, I bet you could "move" the Hoover Dam into a pile of dust in one afternoon!

Good thing we went with the smaller place, now that we can easily store all of our fine china in a single jar.

As with any big change, there are a lot of things to consider when you're moving—like how to avoid ever doing it! In our case, it was a mutual decision. My wife decided to move…and I decided to stay married! Apparently, Rosemary's only conditions for our new place was that it be on the other side of the world, have one more flight of stairs than the Sears Tower, and not have a nursery. I think in the real estate biz they'd call our apartment a "fifth-floor walk-up." I call it a "two-floor walk-up, two-floor panting and sweating profusely, and one-floor forget it, I'll just sleep right here!"

I guess it's true what they say: Home is where the heart attack is!

Of course, now that we've unpacked all the boxes and poured what once was our glassware straight into the trash, all that's left to do is settle in. It was hard for Rosemary and the twins to leave the home we had lived in for 15 years, but I promised them it would be a long time before we'd move again. After all, by my estimate, it's going to take at least two decades for the cable guy to show up! Can you believe these con artists? They call it a time window, but in my experience, it's more like a rift in the space-time continuum!

Hey, Comcast. If I wanted to wait four years for someone to do the job they promised they'd do, I'd vote.

But in the end, I guess the move was worth all the time and aggravation. Something about this new place feels safe and sound, almost like nothing bad can ever find us here. Oh, wait. I know why it feels that way. Because I haven't told my mother-in-law where we live!

Until next time, gang!