Lee always says I don’t post enough Chris stories. She’s right, I don’t. I’ll work on that and it’s particularly easy right now because the boy has been driving me nuts.
For months he’s been talking about saving enough money to move out. I guess he was tired of free room and board living in the Florida room because sure enough, he and his g/f saved enough money for deposits on an apartment and their utlity deposits. They found a place in April (or was it May) and signed a lease that would move them in on August 1. They were excited.
Immediately following the signing of the lease they made noises about cleaning their room and packing their stuff. That lasted about 30 seconds and resulted in 3 bags of trash being carried out to the garbage bin.
In early June, Chris asked for packing tape. I gave him my only roll and told him to enjoy! He packed one box (and didn’t return my tape.)
In late June, he and A had a brilliant idea. They would put all of their clothes into trash bags and take them to A’s mom’s house to wash. I’m not kidding when I say ALL of their clothes. They were unable to decide which clothes were clean and which were dirty so they figured they’d start fresh – with everything washed. After 3 nights of washing clothes over there, they returned with no clothing. They decided they would leave the clean clothes at A’s mom’s house rather than risk getting them all dirty again. This apparently left them with 3 changes of clothing to last a full month.
Second week of July, I asked whether they had started packing again. Chris sheepishly said “Not yet, but we have to do it soon.” Uh, yea.
Third week of July, we headed to BlogHer Con and assumed they would pack non-stop while we were gone. We returned, two days later than originally intended and one day before their move in date and no packing had taken place. None. When I questioned this, I got the following answer:
We decided to just move the big stuff over to the new place and then come back later and go through all of our stuff. This will make it easier to throw things away and not move trash from one house to another. Also, with the furniture out, there will be more room to pack boxes.
So, they’ve moved out. They’ve been in their new place for eight days. The Florida room looks like he still lives there – he’s taken nothing but his contraband animals (don’t ask), his computers, his amp, his TV and the one box he packed in June. Everything else is as he left it.
He says he’s coming over today to finish… his reasoning for doing it today was so that he could pack yellow city garbage bags full of trash and take them to the street immediately, rather than having them sit in the yard getting wet and possibly ripped open by wild animals.
Does anyone care to bet on whether he shows up today? Or whether he actually cleans everything out? The last time he came over here to get some stuff out of his room, he took an extra tea kettle and an extra crockpot from our pantry – and that was it.
Um… when did my son move in with you??
Reminds me of the time I went to help move a friend, who “was totally 100% packed, I swear”… and we got there to find three open boxes (contents: hangers, a handful of books, slightly damp towels, and three shoes – one for each box, and none of them matched). Nothing else was packed. She didn’t even have any boxes. We had to go find boxes, buy packing tape, newspapers for wrapping dishes, and pack her ourselves while she wandered from room to room randomly taking things *out* of the boxes we had packed and putting them in other boxes in a completely nonsensical fashion. This is the same friend who left a dead kitten on my back porch. In the summer. And who, meaning to fly to San Fran, flew to San Diego instead. “I got confused! It was ‘San’ something! How far apart cold they be?”
Sigh.
Thanks for the flashbacks!