Typical North Carolina weather…

Monday morning, we bundled up in 3 layers and played in the snow.  It was 11 degrees that Monday night.  Eleven.

Friday afternoon, we donned our short sleeves and opened all the windows and doors.  It was 71 and absolutely gorgeous.  Also, the rest of the snow that was in heavily shaded areas melted today.

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So we had our storage building moved to the new house today.  My brother inlaw was kind enough to ask his friend at the lumber yard (who has experience moving buildings) if he could cut us a deal to move it.  Goes back to what I said before, moving in the South is always cheaper!  Further proof.  Anyway, I asked Scott how they were going to move it.  His response and I quote “He’s going to pick it up with a forklift and set it on a trailer.”  Oh okay, I thought, trying to picture this in my head.  Quite frankly, just the mental image of $1500 of blood, sweat and tears balancing on a forklift didn’t sit well with me, nor did it make much sense.  I’m thinkin, now what kind of forklift is this?  I’ve never seen one that could just pick up a building.  But in my mental picture, this is an approximation of what I saw:

A very lowboy trailer

And a very heavy duty forklift

So when a flatbed, not to mention a tall flatbed and

a bobcat arrived…I was feeling a bit skeptical.  And by skeptical, I mean nervous.

Caleb and I took our seats in the spectator box – aka in front of the huge pane glass window of the living room.  We raised the blinds all the way as if we were drawing back a curtain and settling in for the show.  As I clung to Caleb, I said “Oh man, this is making me so nervous!”  He looked at me and said “It’s alright Momma” and covered my eyes with his hand.  Attempt one failed.  The building shifted and fell.  Yes fell.  Luckily, my husband happens to have built a very structurally sound building.  Of course every time the truck pulled forward trying to get lined up correctly to back the bed underneath the building, he got stuck and spun tires.  So they kept having to hook a chain to the Bobcat and pull the truck back up the slope.

Does anything look amiss to you in this picture?

Here, this illustration should help.

They were able to get it loaded on the second attempt and tossed two straps over the top.  When we reached the street, a tape measure was stretched from the top peak to the ground.  Seems we wouldn’t be going under any bridges, as we were exactly at the bridge clearance for most bridges.  So our convoy left.  Truck with gigantic building, truck pulling trailer with bobcat, van pulling trailer with lawnmower and tool box, Ford Explorer hauling 35lb. child.  It was like we were told to get in line according to size of load.  Then we came to the bridge.  Up the on ramp we went.  Across the highway.  And back down the exit ramp on the other side.  Everyone pulled over in a gravel lot at the bottom of the ramp to walk around the truck and gawk at how it looked like it would tip over at any given second.  The decision was made to press on, as it looked no worse a few miles from the house than it had looked pulling out of the driveway.

We have conquered…building.

At that point, I had to turn back and head home to retrieve the money to pay this poor man for his troubles.  I raced in the house and back out as fast as I could.  There is a very steep hill between here and the new house.  Each curve I came around, I kept expecting to see the remains of our storage building and a truck tipped over on its side.  When I reached the hill, I thought surely I would have caught up with them, but they were nowhere to be seen.  I breathed a sigh of relief that they actually made it to the top of the hill.  But when I reached the house, they weren’t there.  I called my brother inlaw to check on things, and they had taken a detour around the steep hill.  I don’t blame them.

They did arrive safely, and in one piece…right side up.  Scott said he thought for sure it was going to fall the whole way.  I think everyone  rode leaning to the left, trying to balance out the building leaning heavily to the right. The poor driver, who drives a semi for a living by the way, said he tried to talk to my brother inlaw the whole way there so they could keep their eyes off the wobbling building in their side view mirrors.

Once there, everyone stood around and cringed some more as we debated how to get it off the truck without dropping it or rolling it over and destroying it.  The decision was made to go back and get the bobcat and suddenly the whole damn thing started rolling backwards.  You have never seen grown men move so fast.  Catatrophy was avoided.  It was unloaded and everyone breathed a sigh of relief.  Or as my brother inlaw put it best…”Do you have a hammer and a straight pin?”  Um, why?  “Because you couldn’t drive it up my butthole right now.”

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My mom sent me this absolutely hysterical email the other day.  I think I actually cried I laughed so hard.

A Harley

A bass boat

A grill

Horseshoes

A lawnmower

The weather station

A pet carrier

Hands down the most hilarious gingerbread house ever.

Wedding Reception

Guest bedrooms

A palm pilot

Powerball winner

Above mentioned winner on vacation

Yacht

A little rain never spoils a good day for fishin’

You where this shirt in your engagement picture…”If I throw a stick, will you leave?”

Wedding cake

Doghouse

A pickup car truck

This hunter is obviously a conversationalist.  He could have just had the deer’s head mounted, but that is so wasteful.  Why not make a doorbell?

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If you stick around long enough, I’ll teach ya how we do everything down here in Nascar country.

    …It ended up bein the Clampetts go to Maui!
    Cuz you get my family together and there is an empty K-mart somewhere!
    They showed up at the airport they were usin coolers and grocery bags for luggage
    The sky cap was like “which ones yours? the Samsonite?”
    They were like, “no we got the igloo with the duct tape on it and the 5 piggly wiggly bags right there!”…     -Jeff Foxworthy

So we’re moving.  You already know that.  Scott walked by when I was editing these pictures and said “Sure, sure.  Make fun of the rednecks.”  Nah, seriously we’re not rednecks.  I’ll show you more proof on that subject next post.  But moving is always cheaper in the south.  Seriously.  Proven fact.  Know why?  Because there’s a 95% chance most of your family lives within 20 miles of you.  And a 99% chance that most of them have trucks, trailers, and brute strength.  So when Scott’s boss offered up a truck to move our storage building contents?  Well we jumped right on it.  There’s no better price tag than “Free!”

Take a very old…

…very rusty…


truck

Drive it home…

Just don’t count on it cranking right back up.

As an added bonus, it is a dump truck, so we were able to just back up the the porch and dump everything out!  Okay okay, so we didn’t really do that.  But it would have been cool if we did!  And I definitely would have taken pictures and video.

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