So I'm all moved into my new apartment and although there are some issues with it, I can definitely say that I will die there. That's because I'm Never Moving Again. The entire process lasted eight hours, cost almost a thousand dollars, and used up every last ounce of my mental and physical energy.

The movers were supposed to arrive around 8:30 but didn't show up until 11:10, for reasons that were never entirely clear to me. Since it took damn near four hours to load the truck (caveat: this is entirely my fault for having too much stuff) it was about 3:00 by the time we were ready to leave Campbell for Santa Cruz. This means peak traffic on Highway 17, so it took almost 2 hours for the truck to get to my new place. And of course since you get billed for double drive time, this meant I was billed over 3 hours of drive time alone. What does this add up to? A severe crisis in the financial budget. I'll have to go on a shoe-buying diet.

When the movers eventually showed up in the morning I almost had a heart attack. I expected a couple of burly guys, and these kids looked like they weren't even out of high school. My mother has a bit of a soft spot for young people she perceives to have grown up without the opportunity for education that she thinks they should have had. She believes that a thorough exposure to Victorian literature will turn the most taciturn gangsta into an erudite intellectual. She did her best to be Annie Sullivan to their Helen Keller and questioned them closely about when they would go back to school and what their favorite subjects were ("Uh, lunch, I guess..."). If they had been black, I think she would have tried to take them home with her. She wanted to mentor, I wanted to move.

Mummy dearest was terrified that the movers were working too hard and tried to keep up by bringing down at least as many heavy boxes as they did. As her face got redder, and she got sweatier and out of breath, I tried to convince her to slow down. She's 65, has dangerously high cholesterol which she refuses to take any medication for, and an extremely stressful job. Take all these factors, add a move from a third-floor apartment on a hot day, and you're looking at a heart attack waiting to happen. I kept telling her to take a break, sit down, stay cool, but she kept pleading with me, "They're working so hard!" she'd say, gesturing to her proteges. "Yes," I'd point out, "They're supposed to be. I'm paying them." Later, I discovered that they were making $8 and $11 per hour, although I was paying the moving company $90 per hour for their labor alone. After that, even I was willing to cut them a little slack. I brought some lunch back to the apartment with me and kept them well hydrated. I guess the fact that they didn't have the foresight to bring water with them can be chalked up to a lack of Dickens.

Moving also reminded me about why I miss having a boyfriend. When you are moving all your belongings it's really good to be able to have someone to help you through it, who can tell you everything going to be ok, and hold your hair when you throw up from the sheer anxiety of it all.

What really blew my mind was thinking about CLA and her partner having their entire house remodeled while they had a 4 year old and another on the way. The thing about being pregnant while doing home repairs is you can't take Valium. At least I could rely on pharmaceuticals to get me through the stress.