A Flightless Bird

I got a phone call from Kyle Friday afternoon. He was out looking at places to rent, trying to move out from our house. It’s been just about a year and a half since he moved back in with us, and it took him almost a full year to start steady employment.

The good news was he found a place, and it’s fairly close, and even better it’s accessible to where he currently works and even close to a number of bus routes to other employment opportunities. And he can afford it. He signed the paperwork and would be ready to move in.

Since he worked Saturday and Sunday he asked if I would help him move on Monday. I told him I would be happy to drive him and his stuff to his new place (a basement room in a shared house), though it would have to be around Tevye’s nap schedule. He can load the Millennium Falcon throughout the day and have it ready to go easily so that when Tevye is awake we can just leave.

There is a reason I haven’t blogged a lot about Kyle over the last year and a half that he has lived here – there hasn’t been much to say. Unfortunately the same goes for him moving out – it’s 10 in the morning and I haven’t seen him. He is 22 and responsible enough to handle his own affairs. I should not have to go wake him up to move out. If he wants help, he needs to put forth that effort.

Rent has been paid on his new place. Why wouldn’t you want to get out and get started?

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11:30 he stumbles out of his room saying he didn’t plan on sleeping in that late and asks if I would be able to help him move. I tell him it is all dependent on Tevye’s nap schedule (notice I had to repeat this) and would be leaving shortly to take Xavier to preschool. If it were me I would have been loading up the van in the morning instead of sleeping. “Well, I didn’t plan on sleeping until 11:30!” My reply was “I wouldn’t have stayed up all night.” He got agitated and said “I didn’t stay up all night, only until 1 in the morning.” Not helping yourself there son.

And what kills me is he isn’t ready. While he was up late (but not all night) he wasn’t packing, but instead on the computer. So now he is (as I type this it is 12:30) packing and loading the van. I took Xavier to school and was putting Tevye down for nap when he asked when we would be able to go. I reminded him (again) that my help was contingent on Tevye’s nap schedule and he should have gotten up earlier to load the van. Had he done so we could have made a trip much earlier today when Tevye woke from nap this morning just after 10. On top of this he is still packing. “I was packing, yesterday and the night before.” He has a room, he doesn’t have that much stuff. How long does it take to pack?

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kyle move out1:00 Tevye had woken early from his nap. Kyle is getting empty boxes from the garage. He hadn’t finished packing.  Ultimately he finished loading some of his stuff in the van and we were able to take a small load over before I had to go pick up the other kids from school. There were what felt like acres of unused space on the bench seats and underneath to get a bigger load over had Kyle simply been more prepared to move. Starting at 11 in the morning and ending about 1:30 in the afternoon there was (other than a futon mattress) about a cubic yard of belongings. Really? He loaded this little in the Millennium Falcon in all this time? We’re going to have to go through this again tomorrow?

Leaving the nest shouldn’t be this difficult.