When I woke up Wednesday morning around 7:00, it was already around 70 degrees outside. Our internet had gone away the day before, so I didn’t bother checking out the weather forecast. I had no idea what we were in store for. So I put on jeans and black leather boots to prepare for a day of manual labor. In spite of the fact that we used a moving company, I still spent the day running around, doing last-minute packing, and otherwise being on my feet and not resting.

I had two hours to eat, break down my bed, pack up electronics, and so on. The movers showed up at about nine, as scheduled. They started carrying our stuff down the three flights of stairs to the truck.

It took four hours to unload the apartment, and they worked the entire time. We have a lot of crap. Actually, the majority of it was my roommate’s since she lived there for five years.

The cats were sequestered to the bathroom for the move out. Simon croaked pitifully and poked a long foreleg beneath the door many times. We made periodic visits to check on them; toward the end both were napping on shelves in the empty wall cupboard.

My roommate and I started carrying stuff down to accelerate the process as one o’clock approached. It was then that I noticed that the midday heat had become unusually brutal.

I rode over to the new flat in the front seat of the moving truck. As we passed the Mission Dolores, I noticed the driver crossing himself. His name was Rich, the bigger of the two. The other was named Kenny, and Rich called him “Youngster.” They were both excellent. If you live in SF and are about to move within the city, use these guys.

After their unpaid lunch break (we bought them some Taco Bell), they got started on the load-in. We assumed this would take much less time, as everything was organized and there were fewer steps up. But then it came time to move the couch.

My couch is huge. Almost eight feet long. Absurd. When you reach the top of my stairs, there is a hard, unforgiving right angle at the top, with no leeway anywhere. We actually had to call my landlord and have him bring over the neighbor’s keys to see if they could back into her apartment, then into mine. Rich unscrewed all four of the sofa’s feet. It still. Didn’t. Fit.

Meanwhile I had left to go get the rental car for the week. My roommate called to let me know the news about the couch and ask for my decision. “Fuck the couch,” I said. “Leave it. I’ll get a new, smaller one. That goddamn thing was barely going to fit in the living room anyway.” Sigh. It reminded me of the time in 1996 when I had to make a similar decision about my car, from thousands of miles away in France…

My couch is in the basement now and will soon be for sale.

I returned with the car and they were almost done. Eight hours had passed. The move would end up costing us about $400 each, plus $60 tips from each of us. But oh my god it was worth it. The sun was crippling, burning, scorching, almost one hundred degrees for sure. It would have killed me and three friends to have had to do that, and would have taken over twelve hours.

So then we had to go get the cats. It was six o’clock and still so much left to do. We each had dinner dates, too. The cats were rounded up into their carriers and brought over, along with the first of many carloads of junk we hadn’t had time to pack up.

Simon and Sasha slinked around the new apartment, bellies low, sniffing furiously. It was terribly hot now, and soon they were just stretching out on the floors, picking themselves up every now and again to investigate another spot and lay down some more. Under my bed seemed to be the coolest.

Night came and it cooled down to 75 again. Brian and I walked up to 24th to have dinner. My feet felt broken, but I was giddy. The heat caused billions of gnats to hatch and swarm around streetlights. It was gross. They kept landing on my arms.

The persistent heat also prevented me from sleeping too well. My body collapsed and my brain hurt. And there was so very, very much left to do.

My roommate got up early and fetched us coffee and pastries. We sat out on our deck looking over our backyard, watching the bluebirds and listening to peace and quiet. The 24/7 roar of traffic on Duboce was now too distant to be heard.