Movin’ On Up

I have moved six times over the past two years. I have moved three times in Portland alone. I have lived in this town for thirteen months.

And now we are moving from Portland to Oklahoma. Next week. Via U-Haul. Although I am half-lesbian, I don’t get a discount from U-Haul. It’ll cost about eleven hundred dollars.

When I moved to Portland I flew, white-knuckled, across this great nation. I stayed with Simon until I found my first apartment, and I slowly had my stuff shipped out from New York. It was easy.

I don’t own much in the way of furniture. I’ve basically been wearing the same clothes since high-school. I travel so frequently that college girls automatically want me based on my resemblance to Ani DiFranco lyrics.

Let me just say that although I travel light, I do not travel well. I have an intense fear of flying, am a dreadful driver, cannot read in cars, cannot sleep on planes, and generally am freaked out in motels. I’m a bit, shall we say, high strung. This next week will mark the first road trip of my life. I’m taking it with the person I love and trust more than anything on the planet, which should be a good thing, only he’s also the person who drives me more crazy than a Fergie track on repeat.

While vacillating between abject terror and half-musings like, “Oh, what the hell, this will be fun. Like Thelma & Louise, only with fewer guns and more Skittles,” I tried to think of a way this could be easier.

My ideal move would be Star Trek style, I’d pat my boob and wind up in Norman, in our new house, with all of my stuff carefully placed in one easy to locate area. Oh, and our sheets would be clean and put on the bed already. Unfortunately, that can’t happen. But Elite, a division of New York’s FlatRate Moving, can make it happen. Kinda.

In your absence Elite will pack, label, and organize your stuff. Then they’ll move it (duh)…with the help of a whole professionally assembled team. There’s a carpenter, to build custom crates for your belongings. A handyman, to help hang lighting fixtures and pictures, as well as put up any shelving or other installations in your new residence. Elite has a cleaning service that will purify both your old pad, and your new one. They offer an IT moving assistant to help you reconfigure your computer set-up following the move, and their locksmiths are on hand to help you change the locks once you arrive. And they have a car service, of course, to take you to your new home for the first time from whatever crazy drug deal or Hilton you were banging in order to keep yourself so flush. Fancy.

Never one to shy away from having my rich fantasy life get stomped on by reality, I called Elite to get a quote. I said we were moving from a three bedroom apartment, which is a bit of a fib, considering that it’s Simon’s room in his shared house, plus my two rooms in my shared digs. They asked what we were moving. I thought for a moment and held back saying, “Not a piano.” The answer is, pretty simply, we do not have a whole hell of a lot to move. But Simon does DJ on the weekends, so we’ve got a fair amount of records.

“Um. We have a fairly extensive record collection,” I said, in my best fancy lady voice. I had already figured that, if they asked me to provide a name, I would say “Maria Shriver.” Fortunately, they didn’t ask.

So. To move the two of us, our five-to-ten boxes of things, a record collection, two bikes, two skateboards, and a mattress from Portland to Oklahoma in the lap of luxury would cost…

“Around twenty-one thousand dollars,” the man said.

As I drive a truck through Wyoming and other places I never thought I’d visit I’ll keep that number in mind, along with the fact that Fergie’s music signals the End of Days. Hey, unlike my humps, adventure is free.

Travel tips? AinsleyDrew at gmail dot calm. Thank you to all of you who donate! You will hear, first hand, where the money goes. We leave on Monday or Tuesday, barring something unforeseen, such as Star Trek technology becoming available, or a snow storm. And hopefully we’ll be taking pictures along the way.

Ministry of Imagery is still active, even if we’re in Oklahoma. Hire us to do your web copy, press releases, rebranding, mail campaigns, or bios. Or if you’re in Oklahoma and need a DJ.