Couchgate

Like a lot of other people in the Boston area, we live on the first floor of a two-family. Our apartment used to be the owners' unit, but after they had a baby they decided they needed more room, plus they saw the income potential of collecting monthly rent from two apartments, so they moved to New Hampshire and rented to us. Three people live upstairs, and we've been very fortunate that they are friendly, responsible people and have been excellent neighbors.

A week ago, one of the upstairs residents moved out, and someone else moved in. The one who moved out told us a couple of months ago that she was leaving, and the other two roommates posted their ad on craigslist around the beginning of July. They had all the interested applicants come by over the course of a few days, and had their decision pretty much wrapped up within a week. We did not meet their new roommate; I trust their judgment, and they are the ones who have to live directly with their choice, after all.

We were pretty busy last weekend, and it seemed like a good idea to stay out of the way anyway, so we were gone most of Sunday at one place or another. At one point we came home, around seven in the evening, and found a bunch of stuff on the sidewalk, not exactly blocking our way into the driveway, but hindering it. There were two people sitting on the steps, but it turned out that neither of them was the new roommate but rather friends who were helping him move, and they were waiting for him to come back with some additional help to move these large, bulky items.

We went back out and returned a couple of hours later. By now the stuff had been cleared from the sidewalk, but there was a black leather sofa on our front porch, and later, when I went to take the dog out, I found a piece of exercise equipment sitting by the back steps. I'm assuming that the new guy and his friends had tried to move these things up the steps and had difficulty. The older houses common around here have notoriously narrow stairways, plus the ones in this house curve around 180 degrees on each flight.

Everyone has a story like this; when we lived in our old house, we had a new mattress and box spring delivered, and the box spring would not go up our stairs; fortunately we were able to get the furniture store to swap it for the two-piece kind, but it took another week to get it.

The next day the treadmill got moved up onto the back porch, but otherwise the couch and the treadmill (at least I think that's what it was; it was folded up into a vertical position, and I didn't look at it too closely) sat outside all week. We figured the new guy was planning on selling them or giving them away. I didn't care too much about the treadmill, because it was in the back, and not really in anyone's way. But every day I'd come home from work and look at that couch and think, great, it's still here. It just looked tacky sitting there, and I was worried that the mailman would complain about it blocking access to the mailboxes (postal workers can be funny about things like that).

The Mrs. said, "I'd love to have something out on the porch to sit on, but that couch isn't made to be outdoors, so it's gonna get all gross and mildewy." So now it's been there a week, and while this past week's weather was quite beautiful, we had the remnants of a tropical storm blow through yesterday and overnight, and the couch is now rather wet. This morning when I took the dog out, I noticed that the treadmill is gone. I can't say for sure if it was still there yesterday, but I think it was. One down, one to go.