It’s T-minus VERY close and moving day is upon us, in just a few. For a while I was all ahead of the game, just packing as a hobby to avoid doing work or productive things, but now it’s balls-to-the-wall, put that down and put it in a box packing time. The living room: pure boxes. The twins: sleeping on the floor. The Sanford and Son junk heap on the front yard: both growing and shrinking–someone picked up our plastic cube, but they keep leaving random crap too! CEASE AND DESIST, we’re not actually a junk yard. It’s go-time, people, and here’s a few things I’ve learned:

1. The lack of any rugs or additional furnishings in the family room has focused all attention on the sofa couch in a manner similar to when a room is silent and your elderly aunt does a graceful or not graceful bottom burp and everyone notices. Here’s what I’m trying to say: the couch smells like horrid-ness personified  to the point that last night I had to haul it upstairs at 9pm to escape the stink of not-quite-cleaned-up puke, old food, pets we’ve never had, Lord knows what else. It was disgusting to the point I couldn’t sit on it. No one else seems to notice or be affected as they all are able to lie around on it, ESPECIALLY if the alternative is to pack some stuff. I’m sorry, that description was disgusting, but so is the couch. And here’s the rub: we’re planning to MOVE it. Calling into question how bad the things are that we’re actually throwing away.
2. A: pretty bad. I mean, at the beginning when I packed before the stagers I’m going to wager I packed some things that wouldn’t be making the cut today and may have a short shelf life in the new house. Because now every day it’s walking the line of “Do I want this? Do I REALLY want this? And will it fit into the 3 boxes we have left?” And that brings me to the next thing:
3. Boxes. I saved some from our last move (horrid cheapskate) smart planning! When the fine gentlemen from College Hunks Moving Junk, our movers of choice, came and offered us boxes as a part of the deal, I was all “No, I’ve GOT my boxes, I’m all set.”. He was like Okay ma’am, you’re an idiot. He dropped off 15 that weekend. Fast forward. Ran out of boxes. I went to Wal-Mart, a place I never, ever, on pain of death go to, and bought 10 more there (for $.97 each). Fast forward I called him this weekend and was like “HEY! I need more boxes. Five.” and he was all “I’ll bring you 15 and you’re an idiot.”

As an aside, it does not bother me one bit when the movers from College Hunks imply I’m an idiot. They are correct. I could have bitten the bullet and gotten 30 boxes from the start, but was being dumb. However, following on the theme of last week, my consulting clients CONTINUED  to treat me as a moron to the point that I had to declare a moratorium on all work, starting Friday at noon. I could have packed, which as mentioned is my only hobby now, but…no boxes. So: I wasted 6 hours of my life on Anastasia Steele and Christian Grey. Where was the baby, you wonder? She was napping and wandering about the yard. I had 3 playdates for a total of 7 kids here as I lazed about reading Fifty Shades to determine what the fuss is all about and I’ve never. been. more. disappointed in myself then to devote that much of my time to a cause so stupid! What a dumb series of books. I thought to myself. As I kept reading. And didn’t work or pack. Till cocktail hour. At which time I read with cocktails.

Here’s what else I learned.

1. (really 4, but my aside interrupted the automatic numbers): The best laid plans…at the beginning, I was SUPER organized in my packing in the following manner: a box would contain, for instance, kitchen items and be labelled “Kitchen”. Now, labels for boxes (which I don’t have yet b/c the hunks haven’t come by) would read as follows: Underwear, toaster oven, cleaning supplies, baby memorabilia (fragile!), random heavy breaky-stuff, and princess toys (sluts and hos). What I mean is, everything is getting thrown in helter skelter. Which calls to mind a story of a friend’s friend who had 5 hours to pack an entire house due to extenuating circumstances. My friend’s husband went to help and witnessed a scene of armageddon wherein silverware drawers were being summarily dumped into boxes on top of clothes, on top of valuables, in an effort to get OUT! Tee hee, tee hee I laughed when I heard this story and now I search under beds for empty tote bags to use for silverware. Will the movers think it’s weird to move my china in a gym bag?
2. (really 5) We have a bunch of RANDOM stuff around our house. To wit: 87 random dice. They are popping up everywhere. Are my children operating a floating craps game after I finally head upstairs to read smut go to bed? Unclear. But they are dice of all kinds, all colors, and I do not ever recall having 867 corresponding board games. That ended up dice-less.
3. (really 6–you know what, just ignore the numbers and try to follow along as best you can) We’re a bit lazy and I sense it might bite us in the tush. To wit: when we moved in the house was covered in pink and green carpet that was not preppy and was disgusting. We suckered my brother into coming over and pulling it all up for us and never got the floors done and as I shift stuff around that hasn’t been shifted in 9 years I find: those wooden carpet strips! With carpet tacks! Not sure the new owners were thinking that when they saw “Hardwood floors.”
4. The house is against us. In a way similar to when the Brady Bunch’s had ghosts floating down the steps, because they didn’t want to sell, but HEY HOUSE: We WANT to sell. If  it’s been meaning to leak: it will. Our downstairs faucet just runs, 24-7 now. Like a fountain. Our gutters? Sprouting plants and trees like a tropical rainforest. Screws keep randomly falling out of things like the shower doors, lightbulbs are blowing at a rate of 978 a day, and whatever’s not actively breaking, the baby is working to thwart, which brings us to:
5.  The baby can make a mess out of everything and anything. Almost everything is packed and yet it still looks like a hurricane hit whenever she’s around. She can make a natural disaster out of 6 diapers and a jar of anti-bacterial hand spray brought over by a playmate (my own kids’ has long since been dumped out by her) and I SWEAR, someone should be supervising.
6. We’ve got a lot of stuff. So much is packed. So much remains. I went to my eldest’s room today and found an entire village under her bed–beach towels, a Little People ghetto, a library’s worth of books. PEOPLE, I have NO MORE BOXES! I thought we were mostly done. I keep trying to go through an entire room and pack everything and I kid you not, I literally (in my head but sometimes out loud) yell CLEAR like I’m on CSI and the room is empty of criminals. In my case, it’s empty of stuff to pack.

But no room is ever really empty. They’re all trouble spots, waiting to betray me. With leaky faucets, messy babies, and just STUFF.

Sigh. Off to finish Fifty Shades Freed. The last one. I cannot, cannot believe I have given this much of my life to these books.

Let the craps game commence.

 

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