This weekend was dedicated to nesting activities in preparation for the impending birth, in November, of baby Madeline. The big plan for months has been to finally paint the condo, after seven years of living here the only time the place has been painted was when I moved in. Painting is a sport also known as opening Pandora’s box because you need to clear each room before painting it. That was part of our plan. We wanted to try moving items around in order to determine whether we needed them or not. That way we could chuck the things we don’t need out the window, give them to family members, or move them to offshore locations. The first room we decided to paint was Jeremy’s old room. It sounded like a small size Pandora’s box since it was supposedly an empty room after Jeremy moved out. But it actually still had a closet full of items, three bookshelves with drawers and cabinets, and an entertainment center that I have been trying to get rid of for over 12 months now. Want one?

It is unbelievable how much stuff is hidden in bookshelves and closets. The living room is now full of all the junk that was formerly in the empty room. I called my parents to ask if we could drop off the many photo albums that we had borrowed for making the wedding photo montage. My dad let me know that he had rented a truck from Zip car, the place that gives you wheels when you need ‘em. Apparently he and my mother had also been infected with nesting instincts due to the coming second generation. They were clearing out all of their bookcases and having all of the floors sanded down and stained in their Newton house. Sarah and I saw this as an opportunity to unload our three not too attractive bookcases so when we dropped off the sixty-two photo albums in boxes in Newton we also looked at the fourteen or so empty book cases that they had emptied out into their significantly larger piles of boxes into their living room, study, and bathrooms.

I offered my mom a swap and she said she wanted to see our bookcases. When she arrived in Brookline she decided she didn’t want ours but did offer a couple sets of theirs for us to take. So my dad and I schlepped an old recliner that I bought at the giant church yard sale across the street in the back of the truck they had rented back to Newton thinking we might take it out to Marshfield. On reaching Newton we decided to throw it out so we just left it under a lilac bush near a fence.

According to my parents there is an underclass of scavengers in Newton who professionally take furniture left on the street by wealthy Newtonians and sell the furniture on eBay, craigslist, or in showrooms. I can imagine that these strange third wave, think Alvin Toffler renewable usage of energy, people will ultimately get highly organized and become a major corporation themselves similar to the Kentucky Fried Movie company that makes energy from pimple oil, used combs, and farts from Mexican restaurants. So my dad was confident that one of these people would take the dingy old recliner despite the fact that it was really second hand garbage.

Once in Newton we carried out two heavy, long, and attractive bookcases into the back of the pick-up truck and realized that they were longer than the flat bed of the truck. The only way to fit them was to take the gate down and tie them in. Tying them used to require lots of skill with knots but the truck came with some odd screw things where you can thread rope through them and tighten them. A secondary rope looked like a good insurance policy to avoid having someone behind the truck have their last memory be of a large bookcase flying through their windshield.

Figuring that I was a sailor I tried to make a useful knot but realized that I was hopeless. I called Jeremy because he is a real sailor and he let me know that it would be impossible for me to get walked through a trucker’s hitch knot while on the phone. He said it was two half hitches and a bowlin’ or something like that. I turned to the Internet hoping that a trucker’s hitch was doable by a mere mortal. I found scary animations that looked like this.

I tried to do this for about twenty minutes after printing out a copy of it. My dad then helped me try as well claiming that he had been a boy scout as a child. But we finally both gave up after making the realization that it was a good thing neither of us went into a profession where we needed to make knots regularly. So I tied a granny knot and called it good enough and we trucked the newer book cases over making sure that I wasn’t driving behind the truck in order to avoid having my last memory being of a large bookcase flying through my windshield.