the couch

my sister and her boyfriend just moved to san francisco about two weeks ago. i'm very close with my sister but we've never lived in the same place as adults, she's been in hawaii since she graduated, so i was super excited for her to finally be in my city.

they stayed with friends for about a week, then found a cheap but hilariously large apartment in north beach. empty except for the air mattress i lent them. my sister just started a new job while still moving in and getting her life set up, and she's been super fucking stressed.

last wednesday her boyfriend texted me and asked me to help him grab them a free couch off facebook marketplace, and try to get it home before my sister was off work as a surprise. so of course i did. we showed up there and grabbed the couch. and then proceeded to carry it ourselves the ~12 blocks to their apartment. it started out pretty easy to lift but holy fuck are couches unwieldy. pretty soon we had to drop it for a break about once a block. we would just sit down on the couch on the sidewalk in the middle of sunny san francisco and watch the people walking by. people were laughing and watching us the whole time, it's pretty unusual to see two skinny white bois struggling with a couch in the middle of a crosswalk. honestly by the last 4 blocks we both thought we were gonna die before we ever made it. it had taken us about about 3x longer than we expected lmao. we managed to convince a passing squad to help us lug it 2 of those (shoutout adrien and jason) and then finally got it in the fright elevator. as we were awkwardly flipping it over on the way out, my sister walked out of the elevator right next to us, looked at us, and went "what the fuck???"

anyway we told her the whole saga, and she laughed and hugged us, and we got the couch all the way into their place and set up looking out their window with a view of the golden gate. and they sat down together and got to relax after a long day of work and couch lugging.

and at the end of the day it was a pretty stupid thing to do, and we probably could have gotten a cheap better couch delivered without all that effort, and they're definitely going to replace it once they have their first few paychecks here under their belts. but it was an adventure, and it felt really fucking good to just spend some time and sweat making her life here a little more comfy-cozy. bc that's what having family is about. knowing u always have someone who's gonna be there to move the fucking couch for u when u need it.

and holy fuck has she moved some couches for me.