Rant #2,377: Gone, Movin' On

Yes, the coronavirus is gone, movin' on ...

April Fools!

It isn't even funny anymore, and this is the first of April.

Experts claim that April will probably be the worst month of all for the virus, as it will spread to many more people this month, leading to uneasiness, sickness and fatalities.

It figures, my favorite month of the year is going to go down as the most infectious month of our generation.

Whatever happens, by April 28, I will gain a year on my early retirement, moving one rung up the ladder in a matter of a couple of weeks.

Bully for me!

Anyway, yesterday was moving day at my house. I have wanted to clean up the room where I have all my 45s, LPs and many of my CDs for ages. It is also the room where I am typing up this Rant, and at one time, it was my daughter's room, when she would stay over the weekend when she was a child. We still have a sofa/bed in here, and the room has many good memories during a very difficult time in my life, when I was going through a divorce and my daughter would stay with me every other weekend.

It is the room where we would play with her toys, where we had lots of fun, and where I would put her to sleep when the time came. It was also the room where, one day when I was playing with her, that I decided that I needed to become a human being again, and look for female companionship. It was really an epiphany that I had, that I was having so much fun being my daughter's dad, even through the craziness that I was going through, but I also needed to take care of myself.

That led me to meeting my wife on a blind date, and, well, the rest is history.

Since my daughter pretty much outgrew the room and outgrew me to a certain respect, the room has turned into sort of a catchall room for my family. Whatever we have that we don't know where to put is in here, mostly my stuff but also things like the vacuum cleaner.

The room is a mess, quite frankly, and needs to be cleaned up, and now that I have some time to do just that, I needed to move out the biggest obstacle to making the room better, which was the dresser that was in the room.

That dresser was actually my son's old changing table, a unique piece of furniture which changed into simply a dresser when you flipped over its top. It is difficult to see in the photo I took of it here, but the top flips over for a changing table, and flips back when you just need it for a dresser.

I assume that when my son was growing and couldn't fit on the changing table anymore, we simply moved the furniture into my daughter's room, and she used it for her clothes when she would come over to stay the weekend.

When that stopped happening, the dresser turned into a record and clothes holder, housing some of my 45s and also some clothing. It stayed that way for probably more than a decade or maybe near a decade and a half at least, but if the room needs to be cleaned up, this piece--which took up quite a bit of room--would have to go.

Yesterday, I moved out everything in its way of being moved out, clearing a path for the dresser to be moved out of the room. That was a chore in itself, but I did it by myself. I was able to get the dresser out of the room, but I had forgotten what a sturdy piece of furniture this thing actually was. I mean, its original function was as a changing table, so it had to be super-sturdy to hold a baby, and through the years, its sturdiness continued as a dresser and then, for whatever I was using it for. The draws wouldn't close all the way, but otherwise, the thing was in really good shape.

So once I got it out of the room myself, I had to get it down the stairs and outside to the curb for pickup. That was a major problem, one that I could not handle alone, so my son--the very person this piece of furniture was purchased for 25 years ago before he was even born--helped me maneuver it down the stairs and outside. That itself was kind of bittersweet for me, a piece of his childhood being put out to the curb by him, but it had to be done.

The piece was so heavy that at times on the stairs, both him and I thought that we were losing hold of the dresser, but somehow, we twisted and turned it in just the right way, and brought it through my parents' portion of the house, down a shorter flight of stairs, and into the driveway.

I sent my son up for the drawers--yes, I took out two of the three, but the top one was bolted in as it was part of the changing table mechanism--and I moved the dresser to the curb, which is where the photo was taken.

My son brought down the two drawers that we had taken out, and as if by some type of serendipity, I was able to put the two drawers fully into the furniture for the first time in eons. It was as if the move out of the house fixed what ailed the dresser, and it appears to be completely fixed now, sitting on the curb and waiting to be taken away.

Its absence freed up a lot of space in the room, and for now, I put three of my 45s cabinets in its place. Somewhere down the line, those will have to move, too, but for now, that takes over the space that the dresser inhabited, and the indentation in the carpet signifies that the dresser left its mar, figuratively and literally.

Personally, I would love for someone who was into woodworking--or a person who simply needed a nice dresser--to pick it up, and use it for what it is. I would hate for the sanitation people to cart it away, because its destiny will be as trash.

There are a lot of memories attached to that changing table/dresser, but we closed the book on it yesterday.

And that's no April Fool.