Tags
basement, cautionary fairy tale, humor, Mothers Day, moving, scary
From her fairy godRealtor, CinderBarb learned that when her children are small, they will say, “Let’s play happily all winter down in the subarctic unfinished basement even though it’s basically the place that you scream to the blonde teen in the slasher movie to stay out of. Unless she has to do the laundry, of course.” Then when they become teenagers, their parents bring on the paneling, shag carpet, and the stereo, and the kids will say, “Let’s go down into our neat basement and play some swell board games instead of drag racing down University Avenue, drinking beer in the parking lot, and scoring drugs from students at the U.”
So CinderBarb bought Entropy House (unfinished basement) where she was forced by her wicked step-socioeconomic status to slave from dawn to dusk and where nature, not to mention the dog, abhorred a vacuum. At Entropy House, CinderBarb’s prince was always asking when we [can’t you just see those air-quotes?] are going to finish moving into our house. But somehow in their whole whirlwind home-by-midnight-with-a-PhD courtship, CinderBarb never got around to mentioning her genetic impairment. Sadly, she was born with a congenital Martha Stewart deficiency. Her only coping mechanism when moving to a new castle is to line up the furniture around the walls and hang her two pictures in existing nail-holes in hopes that the previous tenants had better decorating skills. She leaves the actual redecorating until they put the castle on the market and the fairy godRealtor hints that while it’s all very well for lower forms of life like them (Sellers), real humans (Buyers) are going to require roofs and carpet from the current century.
But even CinderBarb had to admit that having a family room decorated in early U-Schlep boxes might not be the Better Castles & Gardens effect she’s after. She lacked the nerve to actually look inside the boxes, many of which followed them, unopened, through the last several castles. Movers cryptically labelled some of the U-Schleps with phrases like “MB—misc.sn.pit.” While this might mean “Master Bedroom—miscellaneous snapshots and pictures,” CinderBarb couldn’t shake the suspicion they actually contained a variety of snake pits belonging to somebody with the initials “M.B.”
So one day she issued a Mary Poppins: “Let us all clean out the basement and move these boxes down there. There will be fun and much pizza.” As with most of her worst ideas, CinderBarb refused to listen to the voice of reason—which in Entropy House was rarely heard above the din anyway—as she deployed her troops into the depths.
At first it wasn’t too bad. The four-year-old, King of Boxes & Junk, began to pile up his cardboard treasures while his sisters gathered about 375 stuffed animals nobody played with in years. If ever. Carried away by her excitement at catching a glimpse of the basement floor, CinderBarb uttered the word that broke the magic spell: “trash”. The King threw himself across Mt. Cardboard screaming, “NO CinderMom, you can’t throw out that box. It’s my airplane.” She reached for another box. “Not that one either. It’s my duck house. In case I get a duck.” She pointed to a little one in the back. “Nope. Spaceship.”
CinderBarb pondered the immortal words of W.C. Fields. “If at first you don’t succeed try again. Then give up. No use being a damned fool about it.” When the King’s back was turned, she bravely threw out an old waffle box.
Meanwhile, his sisters held a wake for their stuffed animals. Somehow they figured out that CinderBarb couldn’t get rid of anything with an obituary. “This is Fluffy/Bluey/Mary/Dolly/Baby/etc. I got her from Grandmom/Aunt Tilly/Uncle Toots and I LOVE her. If you throw her out, I’m going to tell them and they’ll probably get me TWO more. Big ones.”
Bowing to the inevitable, she remortgaged the castle, purchasing thirty-seven miles of shelving to hold all of the King’s junk, stuffed animals, boxes of books, and toys from upstairs. It took her family the better part of a week to haul it all upstairs again. “Next castle,” vowed CinderBarb, will have a magic attic where these boxes can live happily ever after.”
Sadly, not THE END.**
What is the worst thing that happened when you moved? Best moving story?
Elyse said:
I, too, was born with a congenital Martha Stewart deficiency! My husband is a pack rat. While I will gladly throw stuff away, he will not. We have an attic and a basement and both are crammed full of boxes unopened from 5 moves ago (1989). We keep buying bigger places. We even schlepped several unopened boxes back and forth to Europe and our move cross the border from Switzwerland to France. I love those boxes….
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barbtaub said:
It was truly embarrassing when the never-opened boxes were so old they just disintegrated. The movers had to ask if they should repack them.
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Elyse said:
We were obviously separated at birth!
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Jody Kingsbury said:
My biggest “problem” is books. I have so many books, there’s no room for them all on my bookshelves. I’ve moved them all several times and I swear they procreate when no one is looking. But, I can’t manage to part with any of them, for I may want to re-read them or they may have some bit of information I may need at a later (undetermined) time.
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barbtaub said:
I know what you mean! When we sold the Illinois house, I donated over 1200 books to the Champaign library. But that was less than half of them. We kept the Seattle house when we moved to England, mainly because our wonderful tenants let us use one whole bedroom (floor to ceiling) for book storage. We can never sell that house… Do you suppose there is a 12-step for this? “Hello, my name is Barb and I’m a book hoarder.”
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Learning the hard way said:
I love this. Today I’m forced to drive my daughter’s car while mine is having its bumper bar bruises resprayed. She’s in the UK right now and has been using her car as a storage container for ALL her stuffed toys. I learnt this after braking suddenly and being hit in the head with a whimsical stuffed stegosaurus. My youngest has dared me to drive all day with them ranged about the back seat and rear parcel shelf, as favoured by your Japanese exchange student. I’m not sure how much professional credibility this will afford me but I’m guaranteed a warm reception at Build-a-bear.
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barbtaub said:
I guess the one thing to be grateful for is that your daughter collects stuffed animals instead of books, antique weapons, imported whiskeys… (Well, not the booze. You’d have to confiscate that… for it’s own protection of course.)
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The Regular Guy NYC said:
I loathe the day we ever have to me. My gal is a bit of a hoarder. We have so much stuff crammed into each corner and closet space that I want to sceam at times. I’m getting bad too. She has rubbed off on me and now I get attached to every little thing.
We have a storage unit full of boxes that we have not been to in a year!
Great post and a fun read.
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barbtaub said:
Tell your lady that I think she rocks. We have a whole HOUSE in Seattle that we can’t sell because the tenants let us use one room for storage. (Um, we might be talking 5K+ books. Thank God for Kindle, or I’d never be able to leave Europe either…)
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Kassandra Lamb said:
Once again, I’m holding my sides! Great post, Barb. I particularly like the demotivational poster!
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barbtaub said:
Thanks! I used to have a boss who quoted all this motivational crap all the time (If I heard “The fish stinks from the head” once more, there might have been blood…) So I put up a bunch of despair.com posters and I swear he thought I was one of his tribe for months until he finally stopped and read a few of them. Then I came in one day to find he’d replaced them with the real thing. I was gone within a month.
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Kassandra Lamb said:
LOL Isn’t it annoying how some people insist on being optimistic!
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Bastet said:
Oh my…we once thought to sell this place we’re living in once my youngest went of to college…but he kept his room…and all that’s in it. ‘Sides all that there’s a whole floor dedicated to stuff (read junk) hubby uses to make his artistic collages he calls it the work room, of course we also have a few thousand books … but getting back to the youngest he literally wailed, but that’s my home! I’ve got all my stuff there, my whole life is there … now he’s talking of going to Australia, but of course selling the house would be the next best thing to treason … I can only feel for you.
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Georgia Rose said:
Great post to read this morning Barb – I also lack any kind of home making skills and having lived in the same small house for 29 years I cannot face the thought of moving – I think our house is turning into one of those hoarders homes you see on the Channel 4 programmes and we’re in need of a damned good muck out – but no time for that and writing as well so what comes first…hmmmm let me see 😉 but what do you expect when the whole of the kids lives are here and they keep everything…they have already told us we can never move…suits me…what a kerfuffle that would be!!
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