Day of the Flying Mattress

I spent today helping one of my good friends move into her new apartment.

The truck that she borrowed to move with happened to be a short-bed Toyota with a toolbox, so it was basically useless. We stacked her queen-sized mattress and box spring on top of each other, wedged them into the bed and laid them over the cab. Then we strapped them down half-assedly with two leashes I pulled out of my trunk and tied together.

It looked kind of like this:

Not surprisingly, we got almost to her apartment and the mattress flew out onto the street. I was following the truck, so I pulled in front of the mattress and put on my hazard lights. Moments later I saw her and her brother sprinting back in my direction. They threw the mattress over their heads and carried it about 200 yards down the side of the road, back to the truck. I found another two leashes in my car and tied them together (sometimes it pays to be a dog addict), and we crossed the straps. The mattress did not come out again. On that trip.

I didn't know we were moving a second mattress, so when we finished moving her bed, I put the leashes back in my car, which was parked at her new place.

After we moved all of my friend's things, we drove over to another apartment complex and picked up a twin bed for her mother's guest room (she had to replace the bed that my friend took). We had no straps, no rope, no nothing. And shockingly, the mattress and the bedframe (which was on top of it) flew out onto the 4-lane road. So we picked them up and put them in the back of the SUV that was following us in the truck... which, obviously, should have been the original plan, but no one was upset. For the rest of the trip, my friend's mother rode in the bed of the truck to try to hold the box spring down, and sang the theme to the Beverly Hillbillies all the way back to her house. Luckily, no accidents were caused by either mishap.

Alternative blog title: Four small women and an even smaller truck.

We had a hell of a time trying to get the couch out of my friend's storage unit. The unit has an unreasonably tiny door that opens into a short, narrow hallway. And after several failed attempts to squeeze the couch out into the hallway, a frantic search for a screwdriver, removing the feet from the couch with only my green LED keylight as a guide, and some Twister-like maneuvering, I ended up ramming the couch with all my weight to get it wedged through the door. But we did it. At which point my friend's mother jumped up and down yelling, "Son of a bitch! We don't need any man to help us! Son of a bitch! We're awesome!"

We high-fived a lot. It was a pretty priceless moment.