This was one of the most fun Christmas seasons I can remember. All the kids were here, we celebrated Christmas for a week straight, Ty and Megan have started the ball rolling toward moving closer to home, got to see some cousins I don’t usually see…but all things must end.
This weekend, I took Josie back to school. Her room mates have moved out, taking this semester abroad. They took their own belongings with them when they left so Josie suddenly found herself in need of housewares. We spent the last two weeks scouring Goodwill and sales racks to get the things she needed.
The Megabus is not a moving van, so we knew that I’d have to drive her back.
One of the things her room mates took was the television they’d been sharing. Katie had an old TV she wanted to replace so she told her sister she could take it back to school.
By ‘old TV’ I mean one that is probably only five or six years old but of the old school glass tube, obsolete technology. The beast had a 36” screen and was a heavy cube. On Saturday, Josie and I went up to Katie’s to hang out. Katie showed Josie how to make a message board for her apartment and I took down Katie’s Christmas tree while we watched a movie.
Taking the lights off a dead tree is even worse than taking them off an artificial one. Those stupid prickers are sharp and when the tree is dead, they’re sharp and dry. I should have used a pair of loppers to cut off branches as I went; the branches were like fighting with a tiger cub all afternoon.
The movie we watched was the Maze Runner and my review is “Meh.”
Adam loaded the huge TV into the back of the van and we took it home.
By the time we got home, I agreed with Jay, who said “Put that thing out with the garbage; spend the $100.00 and buy a flat screen.”
Now, my default position is always that something free is better than spending money but there’s nothing like driving 20 miles with a giant, heavy, mostly glass box sliding around in the back of your vehicle to make you think some things are more trouble than they’re worth. The idea of lugging that thing over state lines and up into Josie’s apt made my hair ache. Plus, it was so big it would take up too much room we needed for everything else and all I could think of was that if someone rear ended us, it was that television that would kill us.
So we took it out of the van and left it on the boulevard for garbage pickup.
I did ask the neighbors, who happened to be out front, if they wanted it.
They laughed.
Sunday morning, Josie and I loaded up the car, made some sandwiches for the road and left right after church.
I don’t think skipping church when you plan on spending the next few hours in a fiberglass vehicle at 70mph is a good idea. Case in point; when we crossed state lines, a large sign said “Buckle up; it’s the law” and beneath it, the lit up numbers read “486 killed on the road this year”.
It’s still January.
The weather was nice, the roads were clear and traffic was light. The drive was easy and fast. The knee that I injured last summer began to ache after a couple of hours so we switched off driving.
Her apartment is very nice. I hadn’t seen it before. Her dad moved her in back in August. The apt. has four bedrooms but only one of her former roommates sublet. Her new roommate is very nice and easy going. Each of them has their own bathrooms, which will be good for harmony, since Josie doesn’t like to clean her bathroom.
We upacked, did some shopping and got the new TV hooked up to cable, all of which took much longer than it probably should have. Between the three of us we know nothing about any of this technology. We weren’t 100% sure we had the right cables till the TV sprang to life.
The new TV came in a box that Josie picked up with one hand. The new tech may be over complicated but at least it’s light weight.
For dinner, Josie took me to her favorite burger joint. It was a lovely, unseasonably warm evening and after spending hours in the car, the walk felt wonderful. The burger joint was closed for a private party so we looped around the neighborhood till we found a new place. Josie’d never eaten there but we could get seated right away.
The food was fabulous! Totally worth walking the extra four blocks.
It was a fun day but we were both exhausted.
In the morning we set out to find a breakfast place. Josie took me to a little café a few blocks from her apt. The breakfast was delicious.
We wandered around the shopping district and bought a few more things she needed before classes start. I was not in a huge hurry to hit the road, although I did want to beat rush hour home.
It was a lovely road trip. When your kids grow up, you don’t get that many chances to hang out with the one on one so my advice is to take advantage of the opportunities when you can.
I did have to stop a few times to shake the ache out of my knee on the way home but I made such good time that I beat rush hour anyway.
Two minutes after I got home, I got a text from Katie saying “Josie says you didn’t take my TV after all. Can I have it back?”
“If you get it before the garbage man does.” I answered.
It takes me forever to write a text. My phone beeped two seconds after I sent it.
“Where is it?”
As I was trying to type “On the boulevard”, my phone beeped again.
“You stole our TV and threw it away??”
I started to laugh. My phone beeped again.
“Hahahahaha! This is Dad giving my TV to Uncle Steve all over again!”
Years ago, when we first switched to flat screens, Jay gave his brother our first gen. high def TV which must have weighed a ton. I guess we thought Katie had a TV. She’s never gotten over it. Not even though we gave her the 48” screen that’s in her basement right now. That’s the one we watched The Maze Runner on. It still works great.
By the fourth text, she admitted that she laughed till she cried when she heard what we’d done with her generous gift.
Hey, some things are just more trouble than they’re worth. Even if we’d hauled that thing to school, we never would have gotten it up to Josie’s apt.
But the message board they made looks fantastic!