Raise the Roof

FACT:  The average human female (domesticus raise the rooficus) can lift approximately 77, 000 times her own body weight.

I know because I, myself, have been known to lift small automobiles. Why? Because I was rearranging, of course, and the car looked bad where it was—also for purposes of spring-cleaning.

During the period of time when we moved—from Florida (the motherland) to North Carolina (not the Motherland) and then moved back to Florida (now the blessed motherland) and house sat for six months in Winter Springs (Mildew Palace-there’s a story there) and then moved to an Oviedo apartment (underneath the apartment of some frat boys and their blowup doll) and then we moved to a condo in Celebration (Dr. Suess world)—we managed to drag our stuff from Hither-Town to Yon-ville—also two fledgling kids and one cat.

For two hundred and fifty dollars a month, our stuff lived in luxury and ease in a climate controlled storage unit on Aloma Avenue, until I decided our stuff needed rearranging—also moving—again.

One minute I’m looking at our stuff, not liking the way it looks all jumbled in that storage unit for two hundred and fifty bucks a month, and the next minute I’m hauling boxes roughly the size of dumpsters around and trying to shove them into the trunk of a Grand Am, by myself.

How did I do it? I am domesticus raise the rooficus. I employed the scoot, tip, walk, creep, tilt, tip, swing, drag, and counter balance method of moving asteroid sized objects. If I can budge it, I can move it.

Take for example, a wardrobe box (taller than my five foot, one inch head) I became determined to move. I immediately recognized that the wardrobe box would be easy to tip over.

FACT:  For the domesticus raise the rooficus this is not a learned knowledge; it is purely instinctive. Tall boxes fall over like dominoes set up by a drunk.

I began by jamming myself between the wall and the wardrobe box, and I pushed it over. Once the box was on its side, I attempted to employ the dragging method. But this was one tall mother . . . of a box (also heavy,) and it did not respond to the dragging method.

Never one to say, “You’re going to rupture something.”

I next attempted the walking method. This method consists of wedging oneself between the wall and the tall (also heavy) box and kicking it from one side, moving it three inches to the right. I repeated this action on the other side, moving it three inches to the left and a fraction of an inch forward. This is called “walking” the box.

Forty-seven years, I mean minutes, later, the tall (also heavy) box was in the parking lot, and I was trying to decide which method to employ to lift the sucker into the trunk of my car. Let me put it this way. I know how they built the pyramids with only croc dung and sticks.

I continued to move mountains all weekend.

On Monday, I was afraid I’d given myself a do-it-yourself hysterectomy, so I begged my teenage son to help me. He could tuck multiple boxes under each hairy armpit and slouch with them to the car. I remain envious.

“See son, I’ve been lifting boxes roughly the size of bunk beds. Can you help me?”

“Mother,” he began, while grazing from a bag of dusty Doritos and sitting on a couch I had carried in on my back, “you know how I feel about the entire cycle of packing and moving and packing and moving, again and again, in an endless spiral of cascading doom brought on by our overdependence on material items used to define and validate ourselves in a corrupt society. You know I want to be an intenerate soapbox lecturer without purse or script.” He grazed on.

“I think my hysterectomy is flaring up.”

Raising a disdainful eyebrow, he said, “Hummmph!”

“Did you know that I can life approximately 77, 000 times my own body weight?”

“Then what do you need me for?” he said.

“Get up and help me, or I’ll tip you over and use the tilt-kick-drag moving method on you.”

“Let me get my shoes,” he said.

FACT: A drone is just a teenager without a couch.

Oh, by the way, do you want to know what was in the wardrobe box (taller than my own head)?  There were two tons of teenage son’s Star Wars memorabilia including light saber and pose able action figures—overdependence, my eye.

Have a great week and don’t lift anything heavier than a hamster wheel.

Linda (Queen of the Drone People) Zern