We've been living in The City of Angels for 1 whole year now. I still haven't made the adjustment to needing a car like I need legs, but I'm getting there. And because we made it over the 1 year hump, I figured we weren't going anywhere soon. Therefore it was time to get all the boxes out of our apartment.
After going through the motions of trying to get rid of excess stuff via Goodwill and the trash dumpster, I searched online for storage units. There's a storage facility about 2 blocks away from us in Venice, but that one cost about double what another one did less than a mile away in Marina Del Rey. I got a 4' x 5' unit for a bargain, especially considering we'd be getting more than that space back in our apartment, and the little boy would have more room to push his toys around.
Taryn at the storage center office had me sign documents saying: I wasn't in the military, I wasn't storing a car in a 4' x 5' space, or that I wouldn't live there or house animals or food in the unit. It felt like I was signing my life away when I was really only trying to rent a tiny piece of California. One of the last things to sign for was insurance, and because I already had renters insurance, I told her I didn't want it. Taryn told me that I get the first month's insurance free, but I'd have to come back into the office to cancel it later. I really didn't want to come back, but I thought: What the hell, it couldn't hurt.
So I loaded the boxes I had with me into the 4' x 5' space. I figured that was enough excitement for a Saturday and I'd bring the rest tomorrow. Besides, we had to go to Pasadena to meet Judah's brand new cousin, Siena.
The next morning I made at least seven trips up and down the stairs loading the wagon to take our boxes to the storage space. When I got there I did the routine of grabbing the cart, loading the boxes from the car to the cart, and going up the elevator. When I arrived at the third floor I saw some guy who looked like Borat with a couple carts of his crap blocking the hallway. I looked for an alternate route to get to my space, but another guy had blocked the hallway with his crap. I left my crap sitting on the cart and asked Borat-guy if he wouldn't mind moving his cart so I could get mine past. He was annoyed and told me to look in my space first because there was a flood last night, and I might not want to put my crap into a wet storage unit.
I walked over to my storage space, unlocked the padlock and looked inside. At first glance it looked fine. Then I touched the floor. Damp. Damn. I looked at a couple of the boxes and they were soggy near the floor. Luckily Taryn took care of me and got me a new, dry storage unit that was even better because it was near the entrance and the carts. She even gave me some new boxes to replace my soggy ones. Nothing was damaged too badly except the box that the microwave was in.
And the microwave is pretty sog-proof. Now I can cancel that insurance. What are the odds of lightning (or a flood) striking the same place twice?
