"Well, here we are!"
Three hours on the road and one almost-ended-up-wearing-a-couch-as-a-hood-ornament incident into the day, my family and I had finally arrived at the apartment. I was here because this is where I was going to be living for the foreseeable future. My family was here because they didn't think I could move myself in properly. (Spoiler--they were probably right.)
"Check out the kitchen!" Mom pointed happily--I guess she wanted me to practice the culinary arts more than I had at college. (Hello, Papa Murphy's.) I was more interested in the large living room, casting my eyes around it with the practiced gaze of a hopeful martial artist. "I bet I could do five tornado round-kicks in here without running out of room," I mused.
My family, predictably, ignored me, the siblings scattering to explore the nooks and crannies. Mom and Dad dragged me out of the living room into the kitchen to point out all the amenities of cooking. A few moments later, Quill's voice floated out of the hall leading to the bedrooms. "Hey, I found the linen closet!"
I snickered. "Soon to be relabeled the beer closet."
"Radar," Mom scolded me.
"I was kidding," I pointed out, rolling my eyes. "You know I hate beer. Well, except root beer, anyway."
"Hey, that's what we used that closet for--beer," Dad told me with a straight face.
"Don't encourage him," Mom grumbled.
"I'm thinking that's where I'll put my extra computer equipment," I decided, referencing the massive collection of computer paraphernalia that I never traveled anywhere without.
"Hey, Nemesis, let's get the furniture off the truck!" Dad yelled down the hall at my brother.
"Got it." Nemesis replaced his fedora on his head and vanished out the door after Dad.
"Which room are you going to use?" Squirrel inquired a moment later.
I correctly assumed she meant the bedrooms. "Both," I informed her.
"Both?" Mom inquired, frowning.
"Yeah," I laughed. "The small one is going to be my bedroom, and the big one's going to be my office."
"A little help here?" Dad yelled from the doorway.
We boys wrestled the couch through the doorway with no more difficulty than we normally faced. Mom and the girls began telling me where to push the couch and chair to try to figure out where it would go, doing their normal approach of putting it in each possible location five or six times before deciding that it was just fine where it had been at the beginning. (It must be a girl thing.) Mom then decided that she wanted to sanitize every inch of the apartment and ordered me out to my car to retrieve the cleaning supplies. As I recalled, I'd conveniently buried them underneath literally everything, so I stomped out to the car to begin unpacking. I yanked the door open and was buried by an avalanche of clothes, sneakers, and boxes.
Apparently, I'd forgotten that I'd packed everything the the brim, and then had to get help to try to get the car door shut. Whoops.
Thirty minutes later, I finally managed to retrieve the cleaning supplies. The girls went to town (figuratively) on the apartment while Dad and Nemesis went to town (literally) to grab a few things, like door mats and blinds. I set up my bedroom and began untangling the computer cords to begin construction of my office/evil lair.
Quill popped her head in. "Hey, Radar, do you want us to dust the blinds out in the living room and bathroom, or do you want us to do that?"
I looked at her blankly. "Dust the blinds?"
Quill sighed. "You were right, Mom!" she yelled. "I'll get it!"
"Why do I feel like I was just the source of a bet?" I muttered under my breath.
By the time Dad and Nemesis got back, the girls had scrubbed basically everything and organized the kitchen, and I was about half done with my evil lair. We were able to wrap things up by about 1:30, at which point the siblings were threatening to eat ME, at which point we adjourned to a fast-food joint for some shrimp.
Let grad school commence!!!!
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