OK

So, I went on vacation.

Then I got sick and got better.

Then I was not so much interested in "packing" anymore.

But now, I think things are about get crazy and winter coats are about to fly into boxes at rates previously unknown. No scarf unturned, no silver bowl unpacked. Today was the defining moment I needed to give me all the motivation I'll need.

After showering this morning (and to be honest, it was late morning... OK, really it was after lunch, but I'm a student and a writer and it is my house. I'll shower when I feel like showering, thank you very much), I wrapped up in three towels and sat on the far end of my sofa. I may have been reading emails and checking faceboook. Like I said, my house.

I'm sitting there, all wrapped up, typing away, and suddenly I'm having an out of body experience. I'm floating somewhere above myself watching a miniature lobster with giant claws scurry across my left forearm and sashay across my keyboard. The miniature lobster looks particularly menacing against my white Mac keypad. It is so segmented. And wiggly. I get it together long enough to smoosh him until he oozes, and start to breathe again.

First the screaming. Then the questions. Where the fuck (and truly I can think of no other word here) did he come from? Do I have earwigs living in my hair? In my clean towels? In my shampoo? The sofa? How soon can we get out of here?

I don't like it when there is an earwig on the floor in the kitchen by the baseboards. I don't like it when one crawls on the wall by the bedroom door. I don't like them in the bathtub or even outside on the recycling bin. It is a whole other thing with the earwig is up on my body. Oh my. Eww. I can't even type this with my eyes open. I'm too busy shuddering.

So. Over. Earwigs.

Husband and I are killing two or three a day, minimum. I don't know where they are coming from, where they are hiding, or what the odds are that they'll follow us when we move. I love my charming, ancient house. But it is time to get up and out of here. Now. Eww.

Wedding Anniversary

Today's Stats:

Total number of boxes packed: 2
Total number of boxes built: 5
Total number of boxes already packed that were opened, shuffled about, and repacked: 2
Verdict: Not bad, but not great.

Ah, well, there are other things to do. Husband and I have been married for four years today, having now been together for eleven years and two months. What is a few boxes in the scope of things? We're off for a picnic at the botanical gardens and then a camp-out in the backyard. Change, for the moment, can wait.

The Set-Up

My husband and I are moving for the third time in four years in five short weeks. So far, I have sixteen boxes packed. Six of these are tequila boxes donated by an elementary school. Husband and I are not sure why schools always seem to be using liquor boxes or how the schools get them in the first place, but they are the right size to fill with books and still be light enough to lift, so we are lucky.

There are nine file storage boxes (a gift from my lawyer father the last time we visited) waiting to be assembled in my dining room, and an unknown number of broken-down boxes in the basement from the last time we moved. Husband warns that some of these are moldy and/or have suffered water damaged. Just like us, I say. He laughs, even though we can't quite explain the joke.

There are two of us to pack up the house, though Husband is working full-time this summer, teaching music and art at the migrant education program in another town, so that mostly leaves my one set of arms with one roll of packaging tape, and the hundreds of things and forgotten things in the six or so rooms of our little bungalow. Plus the basement. Also, the garage.

There will be one moving truck, two hand-trolleys, and eight packing blankets in our driveway in exactly thirty-nine days. This blog is about how we'll manage to pack all our boxes before then. This is about how many dishes will fit inside a box that once held reams of paper. This is about how lonely empty bookshelves look in the glow of a lamp and the smooth satisfaction of spackle in a nail hole. How I'll find someone to buy our washer and dryer. How Husband and I don't talk about now or moving day, but what our lives were like before and what they might be like in six months. How sometimes we get angry. How we get grateful. How we'll decide what to take with us and what to leave behind, and what happens when we stop counting.