Multi-Purpose Plastic Bags

I hadn’t heard from my little Guatemalan friend for a while, but today she called to ask if I could help them move tomorrow. Tomorrow as we are on a plane bound for Germany...

When I couldn’t do tomorrow, she asked if I could move some things this afternoon. I really had nothing much to do, having already packed my little suitcase. As I was headed out the door, I grabbed the remains of a box of big black trash bags just in case.

The biggest treat of the afternoon was seeing baby Angeli, who is growing by leaps and bounds. She now weighs 13 pounds at just 10 weeks. She is still the good-natured baby she has always been.

We loaded up my car with the first round of big plastic bags. Then there was this little issue of getting the key to the new apartment. It doesn’t help that my Spanish isn’t fluent. But I finally figured out that for some reason her 16-year-old brother had the key and he was at juvenile court for skipping too much school. So I drove her mother and stepfather to the courthouse so they could get the key, her stepfather took off for work, and her mother and I continued the process of moving.

Fortunately the new apartment is only about a mile away. But unfortunately by the time we arrived it had started sleeting.

I thought we were totally screwed when we arrived at the front door and her mother didn’t know the code. Some nice kid sensed our dilemma and helped us get in, imparting the code for future reference.

The new apartment is much bigger and nicer than the current one. It is clean and the carpeting looks like it has just been shampooed.

While we hauled in the first load, the daughter was back in the old apartment filling the plastic bags I had brought.

We managed to take two carloads before I was just too cold and wet to continue.

I asked how they would get everything else moved. The mother said they were renting a camioncito (little truck) tomorrow and had hoped I could drive it for them. It just registered that none of them has a driver’s license. But in my absence, some other relative with a license has been called into service.

It’s nice to think of them having a fresh start in such a nice place. I’m sure the management thinks there are really 4 people living in the space that will house 7. I wonder how long it will take them to figure out the truth and whether they will enforce the law or just continue to collect the rent with a blind eye.

This will be a good test of my mother-in-law’s belief that getting cold and wet guarantees being sick the next day. I surely hope God will spare me a cold since I was doing something nice for someone else.