My weekend

My cousin Greene from Australia and I are on a road trip to Arizona. My grandfather passed away a couple of years ago and there’s still a few loose ends to tie up concerning, his and my grandmother’s house. So we’re having a family gathering to clean up the place up and get it ready for what ever the next step the elders of the family plan on doing with the place. Another late night of driving cross country and then a stormy night at my uncles place, being in a thunderstorm with my cousin is a bad thing which I know from prior experience (vehicle we were driving in the mid 90’s in Australia was struck by lightning with my arm hanging out the window, the arm went numb for a week). After staying up too long taking pictures, went to sleep only to be woken at 7:30 the next morning by my uncle spraying me with ice cold water. I’ll get him back, don’t worry!

Greene was actually up before me! He actually slept in another room and was hit first (he said I snored too much, poor Tragic) We got up, hooked up the trailer to the Dodge, filled up the backseat with blankets and hit the road. My cousin Kim with her kids Kalib (16) and Kelsey (10) in tow met us on the way out of Phoenix and we caravanned up to Cottenwood AZ and dug in. Most of the place had been packed prior by my cousin’s Jenny and Pam, bunch of nice neat boxes taped up really well, nothing in the rooms except for furniture. Our main job was to package up a rather old Chip and Dale dinning room set (china hutch, table, another hutch and 6 chairs) and pick up a hospital bed. Anything else would be considered a bonus. After milling about and looking at everything (this was the first time we’ve been up there since my grandfathers funeral) we started a plan of attack. We would go through the boxes and separate everything from the keeping stuff to the stuff to give to Goodwill before dinner, so that’s what we did. Most of the valuable items had already been put into storage and the rest of the stuff was fairly dated (blow dryers from the 50’s while cool, didn’t hold any value to Kim and I and being a family of junk collectors most of us have 2 of everything) Between wrapping the Chip and Dale set up and sorting, we ended up being done around 6, we took a walk by the river and the kids started complaining about starvation and making them do slave labor, so we put up the whip and went out for Mexican.

It was the far side of 9 PM by the time we got back to the house and I hadn’t even scratched the garage (my grandfather built Seventh Day Adventist church’s for a living and there were tools that I had been slobbering over since I was 5). I stepped in with Kim we and we cased the joint, her being a girly girl, picked out the electric chain saw right off the bat. I packed up a majority the tools to store at my place until someone else in the family stepped up (so they didn’t get given to good will by accident) I’ll use them but there are quite a bit there. Enough to build a fair sized church I’d guess. Kim and the kids went to sleep around one and Greene and I stayed up till 3 or so wrapping up the furniture. We didn’t want to get blamed if anything went wrong!

Next morning was another early start, Kim had a baby shower to go to (I think, maybe she just wanted to get out of the smelly heavy lifting :P I know you’re reading this Kim) After all the sweating over the kitchen set, the hardest thing to move was the Damn bed. We could have used the help of Superman and a few of his strong friends. But being the work smarter not harder slacker that I am, opted to use a furniture mover to do most of the work, was still back breaking hard, going to feel it tomorrow. Soon after we were done and on our way down south. Whew, done, now it’s time to go out and have a good time.