Day 25

Moving Day.

There is an old movie out there that I am not sure you have ever seen.  A Richard Pryor film about the perils a man faced when he hired a moving company to help relocate his family from one city to another.  This film has weighed heavy on my mind since the good folks from our moving company showed up to pack us up for our trip overseas.  Horrors of broken dishes and soiled garments were constantly churning through my head.  Fortunately, the guys in the States were pros.  Packed everything securely and itemized the cargo right down to every last spoon and fork.  It was truly and orchestrated sight to behold.  Their French counterparts however, were  . . . well . . . fragrant.  Let’s go with that.  The old saying “one of these things is not like the other” kept playing over and over in a sing song harmony inside my head as the crew rolled up in front of our new home.

I don’t want this to come off sounding like they weren’t fine fellows or anything like that, this was just going to be a different experience than the one we had at home.  That’s OK though, because that is what I have come to love about our new home.  A vast departure from the expected.  They pulled their Mercedes delivery vehicle up front in a mad his of air breaks and a plume of diesel smoke.  On back, our shipping container.  Battered and bruised.  Assaulted by everything that Poseidon himself could throw at it.  Inside, I prayed, all my belongings rested safely in their well packed boxes.  At least for now anyway.  We encountered our first obstacle of the day almost the moment they arrived.  We live on a very narrow one way corridor with limited parking.  We had cleared our vehicles, but apparently this would still not allow for the unloading of the container.  There was a car even with our drive that needed to be moved.  The movers inquired with our neighbor and after a fair amount of discourse, we discovered that the car in question was in fact Madam Chabou’s that she had left behind.  The neighbor had already phoned her but she could not be reached.

Undetered from their mission, four of our relatively thin framed movers approached the vehicle.  Much to our horror and delight, the four simply picked up the car and moved it two spaces forward.  Until now I had only joked about this possible parking procedure for my 206.  I now know it can be done, for Madam Chabou’s vehicle is a little Fiat approximately the same size as my Peugeot.  With mouths agape, my wife and I looked on.  Note to self, have movers return the car to its original position when they are done.

I already knew that this would be a different experience than the one we had in the State because we had been informed that what took two days to pack in the US was only going to take 3 hours to “unpack”.  Perhaps the language barrier is to blame, but I think what they meant was it would take 3 hours to unload the boxes into our home between smoke breaks and what I can only imagine were pointed jabs at the Gringos.  Sorry, went with Spanish there as I don’t know what the French version of “Gringo” is.  The men were very nice and courteous and in fact offered to put by bed together for me, however, after a pack or two of unfiltered cigarettes and some heavy manual labor without the aid of deodorant, I decided that it might be best for my items to remain in their boxes until I myself could unpack them.  True to their word, within three hours the deed was done.  The once empty domicile of Madam Chabou was now our home . . . stuffed to the gills with huge boxes filled with our stuff.  This was obviously going to take some time.  Without a moment to lose, we set about unpacking our stuff and setting up shop.  Furniture assembly for me and a liberal dousing of Bleach from my wife.

We knew the children would not be entertained long by the piles of packing paper and empty boxes to play in so I took a moment to hook up our newly acquired French XBOX to our newly acquired LCD TV.  The entertainment didn’t last long.  Within moments, the brand new TV had had enough and went from glorious HiDef luster to some shaky orange and green lines.  Despite my best efforts of turning it off and on, I could not coax it back to life.  The piece of shit didn’t last a half hour.  I won’t name names, but the initials are SAMSUNG.  They will be receiving a letter.  Bastards.  This was inconvenient for the children, but a disaster for my wife and I.  Not only would our children not be entertained for the evening, but we would have to replace said TV within hours of waking in the morning so that we could make our appointment with the cable guy.

Needing a moment and now very hungry we sent my wife on foot to the local market.  She left with our little green shopping cart and my blessings.  She took and umbrella just in case it sprinkled as the skies were gray throughout the day.  Sprinkle it did.  Actually, more of a full on downpour.  Being the attentive husband that I am, I noticed the meteorological change of events and loaded the kids in the 206 and headed to the market before she had to walk back the rain.  I made it just in time and prevented another melodrama for the day.  It was decided that nobody was in the mood to cook in spite of our bag full of vittles and it might be nice to try out one of the eating establishment within spitting distance of our home.  The eldest boy’s target was a Chinese place we had seen on a prior outing.  Chinese sounded lovely.  We went in and ordered a bit of carry out.  A very nice gentleman greeted us and relieved us from our attempts at deciphering the French Chinese menu (yeah I said it) by not only offering us a menu with pictures, but also letting us know that he spoke a fair bit of English himself.

After a bit of time and several close calls with my parked vehicle, we made our way back home to enjoy our bounty.  This would be a bright spot in our day as the food was tremendous.  Absolutely full of MSG, and the medium well on the alley cat was second to none.  We will be getting to know our French Chinese friends well.  Back to furniture detail.  With back aching from labor and head aching from the Bleach fumes my wife was putting forth, it was time to call it a VERY late evening indeed.  It would be an early morning too as I spent most of my night tossing and turning with the worry that my youngest would exit the premises in the night and drown in the back yard pool.  The alarm that Madam Chabou installed was apparently low on batteries and was making such a racket that it would have woken the dead.  In an effort to have mercy on my new neighbors, I disabled the beast by removing said batteries and pitching them in the trash.  This action had me certain that I would awake to tragedy and that I would have to live out the remainder of my miserable days knowing that I was the one to blame for my child’s untimely demise.  I know, I have such a bright outlook on life.  You are clearly wondering if I ever frown.  Cheery, that’s what I call myself.  Fortunately, everyone is still here and new batteries have been procured.

Hopefully, within a day I will once again have access to the World Wide Web and will have caught you back up to date.  Good bye for now.  Two more installments coming soon.