Moving

So, my daughter and her family -- son-in-law, two grandboys -- are moving into a new house. Bigger, nicer place, two floors, and my son-in-law's parents are going to be in the bottom half. 

They hired movers for the big stuff --they are coming on Monday. And the new home is only a couple of blocks away from the old one, so we went over to help them pack boxes and haul little stuff. Little stuff being things that two people can move using a pick-up truck, SUV, or van. My son-in-law's brother helped, as did his parents, so we had plenty of hands, albeit some of them shouldn't have been lifting anything bigger than a bread box. 

We spent most of the last three days at it, since it always takes more than you figured before hand. 

Going up and down the singing basement stairs was the most fun, since there are three spots where a man my size can't stand upright without whacking my skull, and my son-in-law and his brother are both four or five inches taller than I. The creaks and groans the narrow steps offered seemed on the edge of ominous: Will they collapse this time? I hope not ...

Didn't hurt anything, back was fine, but those steps worked my calf muscles really good. 

My son-in-law, with his back still healing from surgery, wasn't suppose to lift anything, so he mostly packed boxed and took furniture apart. (Except when he thought nobody was looking, so we had to keep telling him to quit it.)

They've been in the house nine years, never threw anything out, and still had stuff in boxes from when they moved in, too. We knocked off around one p.m. and they'll be shuttling small things back and forth for days to come..

Yesterday, it started to rain in the afternoon, and it's coming down pretty good today, which just adds a bit of wet spice to the mix ...

More fun than a barrel of monkeys, moving. Which is why I'm going to be carried out of my house feet-first before I do it here again ...