Moving Day: Take 2

A little bit of backstory on the exercise in moving.

My friend's son and his wife (henceforth called Tim for the sake of brevity but all decisions were joint decisions) put their house up for sale and it sold in less than 48 hours with the provision that they vacate immediately.

Tim found a house to rent and they moved in over the weekend.  A house with four kids under the age of 9, plus two adults, can accumulate a staggering amount of "stuff".  My 65 year-old friend and the two couples in their seventies and eighties moved the household from the house that was being sold to the rental this past weekend.

And then...the estranged husband of the woman who rented Tim the house showed up just as the last items were being put away.  The couple was in the process of divorcing.  The man became insanely angry and insisted they leave.  The hair on the back of everybody's necks went up.

For the record, Tim (singular) works in law enforcement and he is not easy to rattle even if it is the kind of job that gives Mrs Tim lots of practice in worrying.

Tim found another house, this one in downtown Kalamazoo.  Once again the wagon train of minivans and trailers was loaded up.  One trip was made to a storage unit that was 30 feet deep, by 10 feet wide by 10 feet high.  Why do I mention the height?  Because that space was filled.

Another wagon train of equal weight and volume was made to downtown K-zoo.

And the garage which was supposed to be wired for electricity had wire...but no power-feed.  The ad was technically correct but was not going to be suitable for the two freezers filled with beef, pork and venison.

Oh, and the water was not turned on.  Imagine four kids, ages 3-thorugh-9 and no place to toilet.

Tim (singular) stayed behind at the rental to do one last sweep and check for scratches.  He said, "I will be less than an hour behind you."  And then he fell of the earth.

The rental has terrible cell phone reception but texts had always been able to drill through.  After 90 minutes call-after-call, text-after-text was sent and remained unanswered.

The mom was a trooper.  She fed the kids.  She settled them by having them do their homework (spelling and reading).  And she worried.  You could see the worry.  You could almost smell the worry.  After all, the estranged husband was totally whacko.

About four hours later than expected, Tim (singular) shows up.  He had taken one more trailer load to the storage unit and got stuck.  His friend pulled him out.  Tim (singular) mislaid his cell phone.

Today, Mrs Tim will be getting the water turned on and lighting up the company that rented the house with the "wired" garage.  They need to get power to those freezers.

And a big attaboy
The big trailer was on loan from the owner of Charlotte Cabinets, John Little.  He loaned it out for the weekend and expected it back Monday.

John has been an absolute prince among men.  He graciously is allowing Tim's family to use the trailer as a storage unit while they sort out the avalanche of issues. 

If you are looking for cabinets, keep in mind that John Little is "real good people".