Armoires and Wendy's: good ideas gone bad

Once you’ve moved (as in switching condos, apartments or houses) once or twice, it’s difficult to imagine what (outside of perhaps a flesh-eating bacteria on your face, being locked in a tanning bed or drinking bleach) on this earth is worse.

I helped move a friend yesterday, which is why I mention it. Well, actually, I mention it because I feel like an eighty year old man. Everything is stiff, from my shoulders to my knees. I can barely turn my head due to a tussle with a 400-lb armoire and there are apparently muscles in my forearms that are necessary for pretty much every finger movement, including lifting, gripping, and typing. I know this because these exact muscles are, at this moment, as i type these words, on fucking fire.

Ow.

Every time I help a friend move, I decide that’s the last time. Also, every time I move, I decide it’s the last time. Last, that is, until I buy a house, after which THAT move will be the truly final move.

But, of course, I continue these friend-helping and every-9-months-moving things. I lived, for a while, down the street from three Chinese restaurants and two Jiffy Lubes. Have you ever seen a four foot tall and three hundred year old Chinese woman swing a purse at two Mexicans wearing greasy shop clothes and using the word “punta” a lot? I have. Twice. Also, I used to live less than half a mile from a strip club run by the local mafia family that was painted bright pink and had a huge flashing sign with the words “LIVE GIRLS” perpetually on the front, like “DEAD GIRLS” were an option.

Not long ago, I moved from Fremont/Ballard to Kirkland. FreLard is a pretty rad little place, I think. Very close to the water, the city, and two progressive, large universities. A pretty happening place, without being dirty enough that you step on discarded needles on the sidewalk… frequently.

Kirkland, while also on the water, is sorta Yuppie-ville. Pricey, with some fun bars, incredible food, yachts, and a great strip right by the water, but full of these Microsoft geeks with drop-tops, Terminator-in-shiny-clubshirts types with overly-large egos (and biceps to match) and very very rich, spoiled 19 year old boys driving their daddies’ Hummers.

That said, I moved to be 8 (as opposed to 58) minutes from work, and my place has TWO bedrooms, a huge deck, and is walking distance from all the awesome things in Kirkland – the water, the bars, the retaraunts, Hector’s (the hands-down best damn breakfast this side of the country and a bloody Mary that will make you take your clothes off, in a good way), and a Wendy’s (open late!).

I have been smart, in the past, not to live directly behind a Wendy’s.

In my previous residences, I have always lived closer to a market (and, once, an actual vegetable farm) than a fast food restaurant. While this wasn’t by design, it was fortuitous. My new place is directly behind a Wendy’s (which is the best fucking fast food ever, in my opinion, second only to Dicks or White Castle – which is a whole ‘nother story). I am literally two blocks, maybe, from the front door of that shiny mecca of greasy, cheap goodness – (open late!). Also, the walk to the joint is downhill the whole way – a nasty turn of fate that makes it soooo easy to walk there and a red-headed step-bitch to get back home, much less with a value meal tucked in your gut.

My early prediction about this predicament was that a long, bloody battle would ensue between my vegetarianism and Mr. Wendy. There would be casualties, I was sure, and my net time spent at the gym would increase, necessarily, in increments directly related to dollars spent at this hellhole of deliciousness.

So far, I was right on the money. Though I’ve yet to buckle and eat a burger, I have become friendly with the drive through people, who see me coming and start making a baked potato and a side salad, then always ask me if I’d like a sandwich to go with. No, I say, but I’ll take a mini Frosty, please.


I did briefly appear to have won this war, I am proud to say, when the joint came out with that Vanilla Frosty, which tastes like powdered non-dairy milk alternative and gives me drymouth, and is basically an incredibly great fast-food idea gone terribly, awfully wrong. Which sucked for me, because I ordered it once, twice, three times just to be sure it did, in fact, suck as badly as I thought it did the time before. Each time, my worst fears were confirmed. The execution of this new frosty flavor was completely botched.

Unfortunately, after two pissed off weeks on Wendy’s strike, I’m over it, so the war’s back on.

Anyway, back to lessons in moving. Another lesson (in addition to carefully avoiding fast food joints when selecting your new neighborhood) I learned when moving to Kirkland was this:

Unless you plan to die in the home you currently live in, do not, under ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, purchase an armoire. I was reminded of this lesson this weekend, when I got to move another one – and this time it wasn’t mine, which made it even worse.

On armoires: They’re pretty, yes. They hold stuff, which is how you can justify the purchase at first. But about 4 minutes in to bearing 300 lbs of carefully weathered and whitewashed solid wood armoire directly on your lower back, you start to realize that there is absolutely nothing wrong with a regular old closet. Also, that’s about when the other people you’re carrying this ghastly object with start yelling things like “Careful of the goddamn polished brass knobs!!” and “Holy fuck! Did you hear that pop?! I can’t feel my arm!” and “If I die under this over-priced, hand-crafted piece of shit you just HAD to buy, I swear to God I’ll come back as a pissed-off ghost and haunt the balls off of you in this equally over-priced two-bedroom apartment in the center of Yuppie America!!!”

I am close to certain that my hands are now going to fall off my body, so if this is the last post ever, you know where to find the handless girl.

By the way, if I’m handless, that probably also means I’m thirsty and can’t fasten the buckles on my strappy heels, so please bring over a six pack of Miller light, some bendy straws and a pair of slip-on shoes. And maybe a body pillow or the torso of a mannequin. Because handless girls need love too. And please, DON’T buy an armoire. And if you do, and you ask your pushover friends to help you move it, know that they will, but then their hands will fall off and you’ll eternally be tasked with helping them wipe as karmic payback.