Eighteen piles and a dozen roses

If you know the song I just bastardized, well, kudos, my friend.  It gets stuck in my head sometimes, much like another bizarre country tune that my childhood pals in East Texas and I would shout out as we were swaying on a tree swing.  

I know.  It will haunt you forever.  You're welcome.

There's a point I was going to make with this.  Let me remind myself.... Um... Ah.  Okay.

So, yes.  We are moving, as mentioned in my previous silly rant.  As of today, I have roughly two months to get my butt in gear and to pack all of our precious collections.  Collections become less precious when you find out just how much it will cost to haul that junk across state lines.  Very much less precious.

We've decided to employ the help of a moving company, a sort of you-pack-it, we-haul-it situation.  Considering we have one child and cat in our inventory, it seems better to stuff all of us in the car and let someone else drag our cargo to the final destination.  We've done the whole rent-a-truck-and-frighten-yourself-to-death routine with the driving and the hauling and the driving and the driving.  I know that driving with a cat while following your husband who is driving a Penske truck (without his CDL or a chaw of tobaccy in his mouth) seems romantic, but adding a child to the mix creates a new dimension of terror and excitement.  Being a trucker just isn't high on my list of priorities these days.  My old bones aren't up to the challenge anymore.

So, this creates a different problem.  We will be charged by the foot in this giant tractor trailer.  Can you look at everything in your house and say, "Hmm... it looks like we have 13 feet of possessions."?  Well, I can't.  I'm trying to learn the process of turning an entire household into a miniature Borg ship of cubic dimensions.  Don't even get me started on how painful it will be when we assimilate and become cybernetic organisms.  I know, I know.  Resistance is futile.

It's much easier to rent a moving truck and start out with good intentions, with the careful packing of items into boxes of the same size.  As you start the process, you congratulate yourself on how nicely you've stacked your items in the back of the truck.  Then, as the hours drag on and the random crap is still rolling around your house, you begin to stuff things haphazardly into baskets and bags and hobo bindles, cursing yourself for every little thing you've ever purchased in your lifetime.  When you're sweaty and throwing garbage bags full of junk into the truck, desperately trying to close the door to your U-Haul, that is when hindsight kicks you right in the balls.

I really don't like that guy, Hindsight.

I think you see my dilemma.  How does a very unorganized person become organized enough to create  X-amount of space in a tractor trailer to minimize the freight charges?  I can rent a moving truck that is 26 feet, and then proceed to shove my garbage bags into it without problem.  But, can I turn that loosely (and probably dangerously) packed 26 feet into a quaint and dainty square of 13 feet or less?  And before you answer, can I do that without having every single item break in transit?  Ha HA!  See?  It's not so easy.

It's one thing to accept this challenge when the distance is only across town.  It's quite another when you cross an entire continent.

I guess what I'm saying is that we are very popular right now with the charity organizations that drive around and pick up clothing and household donations.  Every few days, one of them calls.  We have the Lupus Foundation and the ARC folks battling it out over who gets my legwarmers and acid-washed jeans.  It's not a pretty sight when diseases and the underpriviledged engage in hand-to-hand combat in the streets over "vintage" clothing.  I'm just trying to help, people.  I'm just trying to help. 

So, keep us in your thoughts as we try to pry ourselves free of our possessions.  Perhaps I will try to assemble the 13 foot (or less, please) Borg ship before we slap it into the truck.  I suspect, however, that the whole thing will fall on me in a very disastrous way.  I should leave this to the professionals, me thinks.

Good thing I'll have the Rubber Duck taking care of things in his convoy.

Convoy!  Convoy!