new friends, or why des has sore legs

Sittin at home,
knockin 'em back,
up rolls a big black cadillac.

Oh sorry, that's a Stray Cats song (which I love, btw).

Sitting at home yesterday, I'm half-heartedly working on a new choker (which is oh so pretty, but time consuming! And I will post pictures when I'm done, of course.) and less than half-heartedly watching tv. A uhaul pulls up right in front of my sliding glass door, which is coincidentally the closest (2) spots to the door of the apartment building, the lucky ducks. I watch as a young couple get out and start unloading. Very soon, just the girl is unloading.

She stops for a breather and to chat with Midnight, who is of course sitting at the screen enjoying the 70-degree air. I'm not sure if she can see me sitting on the couch, watching the transaction. But I continue watching her go back and forth from the truck to her new apartment, carrying small boxes. Now, I've heard from very reliable sources that sometimes the best friends are those that are met while moving in. So I'm sitting there, watching a very cool looking girl about my age move into my building. I am very aware that I have no friends of my own in MI. My brain is clicking.

I hesitate a little, thinking I should wait for Jay to come home because he is the friend maker. But I'm not doing anything besides watching boring daytime tv and working on a necklace that can easily be finished later. So I go out on the patio and pretend to do something with a chair while I wait for Potential New Friend to come back to the truck. She does, and I smile and say hi, and she does the same. I go back inside and ponder, while she makes a few more trips.

(Side note - the way I tell it and remember it, PNF was moving boxes for like 2 hours while I thought this all through. In reality it couldn't have been more than like 15-20 minutes. My brain was just working fast, I guess.)

Soon I decide to do it, to make my move. I'ma be outgoing. I'ma make me a new friend.

PNF returns to the truck. I meander out (all of 7 feet?) and ask if she wants help. She smiles a weary smile and says sure, if I want to....
So I do. I introduce myself and grab a box and follow her upstairs to the 3rd floor. There I meet her boyfriend, who is on the phone trying to get out of just having been called into work. That explains why he wasn't helping unload. We 3 continue tramping up and down the stairs and I remember back to my NYC days when I paid people to do this crap for me. Sure it was expensive, but it saved my poor aching muscles.

Soon Jay comes home, and I stick around in the parking lot long enough so that he can see me and figure out what the dillio is. Sure enough, he comes up to meet our new neighbor-friends. Unbeknownst to me, my poor boyfriend is hungover "like a motherfucker." (Duh, the day after his bday! Just because I'm not hungover doesn't mean nobody is.) But, he's a champ and King of Nice Guys, so he jumps in and helps out. Of course, he's a big strong boy, so he and Boy New Neighbor Friend get all the heavy stuff like giant tvs and couches. Girl New Neighbor Friend is tinier than I am, so we did a good job of supervising that part.

Unloading goes fairly quickly, though we start to rue the nice (hot) weather. When all is said and done, we all take a breather in the new living room. Eventually their friends show up (why they came so late, I'll never know) and we make it back downstairs to our comfy comfy bed. Sweet sweet rest, after a day of moving stuff up 2 flights of stairs.

So, there you have it. I'll let you know how this saga unfolds - whether or not New Neighbor Friends actually become our friends or just use our musclepower and avoid us. But, since we have the prime spying real estate, we have seen them outside a few times. They've waved and even talked to us, so I think Potential New Friends are on their way to becoming Actual New Friends.

But that comfort does not mean my legs don't hurt today.