Moving Mischiefs

I imagine that moving is comparable to giving birth in that after a certain amount of time, people appear to forget how traumatizing the whole affair was and start thinking it’s a good idea to give it another go. 

I have vague memories of suffering when we moved to Delaware – like yeah, I remember some exhaustion and a little frustration, but how bad could it really have been? We lifted like ten boxes and drove a couple days, big deal. Probably, I reasoned with myself, the stress mostly originated from the decision to get rid of all our stuff at a series of garage sales (see here) and then attempt to replenish it all when we arrived in Delaware (see here). We’ll just avoid that stress this time around by packing ALL OF THE THINGS and making a quick 700-mile U-Haul jaunt. Easy peasy. We don’t even have that much stuff…I predict one day of packing, 30 minutes of loading, then off to our glorious new life in a blaze of top-down-tunes-up glory, where we will then unload for 30 minutes and spend no more than one day unpacking and situating.

Lolololol.

Suffice it to say that after the surprise of having more than 10 boxes of crap to our name came a myriad of other sweet surprises. Like when we got a 20-foot U-Haul truck so we’d have “plenty of room” to pack the 500 bicycles that Taylor owns and then having to throw the bicycles on top of everything in a fit of rage because it turns out we actually own enough stuff to fill up a 20-foot U-Haul truck. This is completely counter to everything we thought we stood for in life.

As a side note, I tried getting rid of non-essentials when I started packing, but you’d be amazed at how deftly I can manipulate the definition of “non-essential” when I’m holding any given object in my hands, no matter how long it’s been since I’ve touched the thing. For example, I came across a little blue china tea set I saw at a thrift store approximately four years ago and just HAD to have. I haven’t used it once. I don’t drink tea. It matches nothing else I own so it doesn’t even get displayed. Perfect candidate for donation, yes? Oh no, my friend. Time for the what-if game. WHAT IF one of the new friends I make in Indianapolis just LOVES tea and comes to my house and requests a SPOT OF TEA? It’s hard to make friends as a grown-up, do I really want to handicap myself like this to save some space in the corner of one box? I think not. And so, despite the fact that I don’t keep tea in the house and would thus not be solving the unlikely problem of an impromptu tea party with a brand new friend (not to mention my general hatred of guests in the first place), the tea set was diverted to the “keep” pile. Also known as pretty much the only pile…but I digress.

Okay so then shit really hits the fan when you remember how many address changes loom on the horizon. You’ve lived in a place so long you don’t even remember whom you’ve been slinging that address out to.

Because I did not actually have a forwarding address (because Taylor and I were like, WE’LL JUST MOVE TO INDIANAPOLIS AND FIND SOMEWHERE TO LIVE ONCE WE GET THERE, which actually ended up working out but is typed in caps because I realize what a ballsy move that was), I needed to get one. So, I toddled on down to the Post Office and they were like, “No, you can’t open a post office box from a distance because we’re the worst” <end exact quote>. However, UPS was like, “Hell yeah baby, let’s do it”. Or at least their website said something close to that. So I investigated a few UPS locations in Indianapolis and started down the list.

The first two locations didn’t answer. I tried each of them twice with an average ring total of 532 times. No luck.

However, an individual who was potentially 13 years of age answered at the third location after only about 224 rings.

Let’s call him Kevin.

Kevin answered the phone in the same tone he likely assumes when his mom tells him to clean his room. I told him I needed to open a mailbox at his location before actually moving there so that I could forward my mail.

His response: “Ummmmm, yeah, I don’t think we do that.”

Me: Well, I’m looking at your website right now and it says you do, I just need you to send me the forms so I can get them notarized and send them back.

Kevin: Uh…well…I don’t think we do that.

Me: Kevin, trust me, you definitely do it. In fact, it says here I just need form 1583 notarized along with a copy of 2 IDs, so if you wanna just go ahead and send that over, I’ll be on my way. Pretty busy today, Kev.

Kevin: Wullllll, like, I don’t know. Like I think we’ve had problems before or something so we just don’t do it.

Me: Kevin. May I direct you to the company’s website for further instruction? Sounds to me like it’s still a thing. Let me help catch you up.

Kevin: Yeeeeeeaaahhhh I don’t think we do that.

Me: KEVIN. I’m sure you’re great but it looks like you haven’t dealt with this particular situation before so it might be best if I talk to someone else. (Translation: Any chance there is an adult in the house, KEVIN?)

Kevin: Uh, I don’t think anyone else will know.

Me: Let’s give it a try!

Kevin: Yeaaahh I don’t think so. BUT, there’s something that’s like really important for you to know. So if you open a box with us and then move, you have to file a forward request with us and not the post office, and we charge for that. You know, because it would be you moving…not us moving.

Me: Wow. Thank you, Kevin, for your incredible foresight and factual acuity. Tell me, what are the chances we could talk about opening the box before going over the rules of eventually closing the box?

Kevin: Yeaaahhh I don’t think we can open one for you.

HOLY JESUS, KEVIN. Maybe we come back to this after you’ve attempted puberty.

Moving on to the fourth UPS location on the list. Patrick answers. On a human expression scale of 1 to 10, Patrick is in the negatives. However, Patrick gets shit done, a rare quality it would seem. I explain my situation (this is accompanied by the occasional grunt from his end, which I take as comforting acknowledgment of the precarious spot I’m in), after which he says, “Yeah. We can do that”. Hindsight tells me I should have recorded this call for the training purposes of young Kevin.

I express my undying love to Patrick. He grunts and hangs up the phone, presumably overcome with emotion. He e-mails me the correct form.

Taylor drives 30 minutes to meet me at a Delaware UPS where we pay $10 to notarize this form, after which I walk all over God’s green earth to find a scanner so I can e-mail it back. These feats accomplished, Patrick provides us with a 6-month mailbox lease for the nominal fee of $140, and voila – we have a forwarding address a mere six hours after I dialed the first UPS store. I then call approximately 500,000 places to provide this address knowing full well I will have to call all 500,000 of them back once we get an actual address as I do not plan on spending $300 per year for a mailbox.

I will have you know that I pursued this painful and expensive venture so doggedly because there were two important items of mail that I happened to know would be sent out around the 6^th, which was one day after we’d be leaving our old address and who knows how many days until we had a new address. So, I made sure to call these two places first and provide them with my hard-won UPS address. I made them slowly repeat this address back to me. Then as a back up, I filed a forwarding request with the post office, complete with their stupid $1 fee.

And how, you might ask, were these long and arduous efforts rewarded? I will tell you. They were rewarded with a text from my previous landlord, on the 14^th of June, with a picture of the two pieces of mail I was particularly worried about, which had been delivered directly to our old address.

The moral of this story is that nothing matters. And that UPS should really do something about that Kevin guy.