Day 8 (of 30)

I got up early for this?

DAY 8: Thursday. Of course, I'm parked on the wrong side of the street -- meaning, the side of the street scheduled to be "cleaned" (you know what? Those streets never actually look very clean...) between 8 and 10 in the morning. So, I set my alarm and get up at 7:30, throw on some warm clothes, and walk to my car (just because it's on the wrong side of the street doesn't mean I got a conveniently-located spot in the trade off!) to try and reposition it and avoid a ticket.

So I drive. And I drive. And I drive some more. There is literally nowhere to park. Not only that, but I'm not the only person looking for a place: each and every time I come to a 4-way stop, there is a car sitting at each way, and usually a build-up of cars behind those, all waiting their turn to roll through the stop sign, all eager to nab that miraculous last parking place -- which of course, is always three inches too short. Assuming it exists. And for me, this morning, it didn't.

By this time I'm thoroughly hating my neighborhood and remembering why I'm moving. The remembrance that I'm moving brings me some comfort, but in the mean time I can't just keep circling blocks for two hours. Not with gas as high as it is. Something's gotta give.

Finally, I see a dingy little garage advertising $5 daily parking. So what if it's two blocks west of my apartment, and three additional blocks south? I chance it. Thankfully, I actually had some cash in my wallet. (I used to be the proud owner of six dollars...) And thankfully, I actually found a place in the garage -- on the last floor.

So then I walk back to my apartment, shower, throw some odds and ends into a box, and it is time to hoof it back to the garage, get my car out of hock, drive it back to my block and park on the shiny, newly cleaned curb, so that I can pack it with five boxes full of books, and one crate full of carefully-wrapped breakables.

Milly calls me: she got the keys!

So I jump in my automobile and drive over, find a parking space (oh, new neighborhood, how sweet you are!), and we begin to move in to our new place! We both had books to move in, which we unloaded in order to free up the much-needed (and way too expensive) moving boxes: there is a stack of our combined tomes lining one wall of the bedroom, waist-high!

After all that car-moving, block-walking, stair-climbing, dolly-rolling, and box-schlepping, we are exhausted! Is 7:54 really too early to go to bed? In L.A.?