This post contains no pet news. It’s just more of me complaining! So feel free to skip it.

Friday morning I mentioned that I was on my way to pick up a cargo van to start moving the larger items from our old apartment to our new rented house. Since we’re only moving a few miles down the highway, the plan was to move the big stuff Friday afternoon and evening, then return the van and spend the next week slowly moving over the small stuff in the car as we had time. Obviously I’d have plenty of time to catch up with news and post and whatnot in between trips.

Unfortunately we forgot one very important factor when making this plan: We’re idiots. The very first large item we tried to load into the van was a king-sized mattress.

My husband: “The mattress is the largest so we should load that first.”

Me: “Aren’t some of your friends coming by later to help? Maybe we should wait for them.”

Him: “Yeah, but we might as well get started. We can definitely handle a mattress.”

Me: “Yeah, good point.”

Five minutes later he was lying balled up on the floor of the van in pain, the mattress was lying in the parking lot, and I was running frantically back and forth between them trying to figure out what to do.

He’d pulled a muscle in his back (again) and could barely walk (again). I eventually got him inside, got an ice pack on his back and some pain relievers and muscle relaxants down his throat. Oh, by the way — those pills? Left over from the last time he messed up his back … which was the last time we moved. Somehow we’d both forgotten that he was never again supposed to lift heavy things, ever.

Well the very nice apartment maintenance people helped me get the mattress in the van before the afternoon thunderstorm hit, and my husband’s friends came by after work to mock him and help me load the heaviest furniture. We made two trips Friday evening, but that was all we could manage before people needed to go.

Luckily we got everything that was too big for me to lift by myself — because since then I’ve been slowly and laboriously moving things by myself while my husband sits home in pain. (He hates not being able to help, but at least he’s able to get some work done so this won’t kill our finances too badly.)

Anyway, to shorten this long and boring story, I spent all day Saturday and Sunday moving furniture and other heavy things, and most of Monday relocating the lizards and their (very heavy and easily broken) terrariums.

I still have quite a bit left to do (including something like 20 boxes of books) but I’ve decided to take tomorrow off because I’m a real mess: my feet are blistered on the bottom and bruised on top; I have bruises all up my arms and legs, and my hands are scratched and torn up. The worst is probably where I bruised my left knee — it looks like I had knee surgery. It still hasn’t finished turning purple!

(Last night in the grocery store I noticed a woman glaring angrily at my husband. I eventually figured it out: he looked drunk (muscle relaxants) and I was following him around like a zombie with bruises everywhere but my face. Obviously a battered wife.)

Unfortunately I also managed to hurt my shoulder today, so I have an ice pack on that now. I’m hoping that some ice and a day of rest will help restore it. But I may have to limit computer time tomorrow if it’s really sore.

Oh, and I haven’t even mentioned how our Perforce server failed to boot after the move and the conniptions we had getting it back up, or how we lost the net connector for the Tivo and we’ve hit every Best Buy in Central Florida looking for a replacement, or how I man-handled the 100lb computer desk my husband wanted home and then assembled it for him at 3am because his temporary desk wobbled when he typed, or how I drove back and forth between the new and old place twice trying to find our copy of the lease so I could get the key to our new mailbox. (It was in the car.)

Basically, it’s been a lot of “fun”. I am very much looking forward to a day of playing catch-up with WoW instead of ‘catch-the-heavy-box-with-your-foot’.

And now I will stop complaining. :> Thanks for putting up with me!