Part of the problem is/was the house sold in 6 days with a closing April 8th. It needed to be staged (furniture left in and the house all decorated up) as part of the sale strategy and who figured listing papers signed Wednesday, onto the front of the weekend newspaper Saturday, open House Sunday and TWO competing offers Tuesday.
The battle between the 2 lasted 2 days but then it took another 10 days to satisfy what are called the "subject to's" i.e. Subject to a satisfactory building inspection (which showed they wanted an evaluation of the hot water tank (OK - it is 9 yrs old ???) and an inspection on the furnace. Apparently there was a hole in a pipe (I dunno really cause I only ever had it serviced and made no attempt to understand). The Building Inspector viewed it as a deteriorating pipe but in reality it was OK as it was the hole used to probe the gas (something like that I don't know). Then the Buyer's Bank had to do an appraisal of the value which took another few days after the Building Inspector.
Once the Subject to's were Satisfied I felt confident enough to have the Stager Woman take out all her stuff but I still had 2 Sofas and 2 Beds, chests of drawers, super large entrance mirror - all the yard stuff (few concrete statues) and lawnmower, rakes, lawn chairs and boxes. It all fit into a 12' x 8' storage unit. I'd rented a bigger truck than needed but wanted to have space to move and believe me I had moved out almost everything I could over my trips. There isn't much left it was more a function I just finally had to get it out.
Anyway - in the end it only left me a few days to get the stuff out. A moving company to move international (even needs booking something like 3 months out cause they insist on containerizing everything and insist on their own people coming in and wrapping every single item as it all has to be inventoried for the Customs Inspection at the Border. A value has to be assigned to every item so I can pay appropriate IMPORT tax (or some such). I couldn't do that. I did get a "guess-timate" from one Company that STARTED at $8500 (and the stuff I had left definitely didn't warrant that at all)
NOW that I have what I have located 30 minutes from the Border each and every trip over in the Prius and I can bring it back here. My son in law's older sister lives just minutes from the border and goes down to shop all the time and comes over here so a few boxes of books, ornaments, 3 lamps (stuff like that) is easily brought here. On April 18th the son in law is going over to the mainland for a 2 week course and he'll bring back stuff (i.e. they want my lawn mower as their present one is dying) and all of this is 'second hand' so easy(ier) to bring back vs if you're just running down for the day buying new stuff.
As for finding the guys - I would not have been as confident if it had been later in the day. When I went to the "Fifth Ave Tav" (as it is known) I talked to the Bartender first to get her opinion of 'who' I might ask re: driving. She did know the ones who were not the heavy drinker drinkers and for cash I was able to get two basically respectable family men types who didn't mind getting an impromptu days work. Given my work career me walking into a bar with this mission was easy peasy
BUT I will admit to being somewhat in panic mode as no way could I have shoved 2 sofas into a truck OR lifted the lawn mower or chest of drawers or even the big mirror.All's well that ends well ........ WHEW! I am soooooooo glad it is DONE! (Almost feel like I'm still coming down from this) Not sure I'm telling the daughters - they roll their eyes at me (given how my career impacted them and their lives) and more than wanted me to stop working when I did!
Suffice today I'm sitting and watching TV (and the birdfeeder which seems to have gone down another 1" in the past few days)
regarding the tailgate, I have the same problem. I am fairly tall and my tailgate has two positions, open and open even more, you can bet your life I forget to push it fully open and finish up banging my head 
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Probably not a good thing 
