BOXES!!!

The past two weeks have been draining. Mary Ellen and I end each day physically exhausted. I know what your thinking, "get over it. It can't be that bad". Three of our sons did a tremendous job on Saturday, Sunday and Monday. On Monday afternoon Two Men and a Truck moved the heavy stuff. One might think with all that help it would pretty much take care of it. If you thought that, you'd be wrong. Its all the little stuff, not to mention all our clothes. It has taken us the last five days to totally clear everything out of the house. We got it as far as the garage. Tomorrow we'll get it into my truck and haul it over to our new home. The good news is we both love our apartment! Thank god we have a garage. We thought we had gotten rid of most of the excess baggage. We've made numerous trips to Goodwill, Women's Shelter, Faith Mission, and of course "the dump". Even after all that plus Craig's List, we've managed to have way more stuff than we have apartment! The lesson learned is NEVER stay in the same house for 36 years.

So, for those of you planning to send us a 'house warming' gift, and I'm sure many of you were thinking just that, DON'T. In fact Mary Ellen and I have a plan. It's called a 'reverse house warming'. So, all of you can plan to receive a surprise package in the next few weeks. Nothing elaborate mind you. Most of what we'll be sending you are items we were too embarrassed to drop off at St. Vincent De Paul. So you've got that to look forward to.

For those of you who have moved in the past 36 years, have you noticed how things that you truly valued seem to disappear during the moving process? What makes this even worse is we're finding ourselves saying stupid things like "I know I saw it in a box". My God, that's all we've seen in the past three weeks. Just yesterday I asked my wife, "have you seen my knife"? This is a knife that I always carry in my pocket. It's my favorite knife. My Son, Tim, bought me this knife. It's a really good knife. It has simply disappeared. That same day I took some pictures of the apartment complex. I had my camera bag in the truck with, of course, my camera and the USB cable with a little gizmo that goes into the camera. With this simple little cable I'm actually able to send pictures from my camera to my Mac Book. Truly amazing. Well, I'm no longer able to do this. My cable has vanished. This is why none of you are able to see the lovely place where we now live along with 567 boxes!

Speaking of boxes, most of what we moved now resides in our lovely attached garage. The plan was to have all of this stuff that we weren't mentally capable of trashing to reside on the right side of our garage, leaving plenty of room for Mary Ellen's PT Cruiser. My truck of course would reside in the parking area. At this moment both vehicles reside in the parking area. I'm betting on 2013 for PT Cruiser indoor parking!

We moved one of those lightweight plastic shelves we had in our former garage. I honestly thought this five tiered shelving would handle most of the stuff. The rest would hang from some cleverly positioned hooks attached to the walls and ceiling. Last Wednesday I purchased two more five tiered shelves. But the boxes kept coming. Last night we returned to Menard's. I now have five of the five tiered shelving. I do not plan to purchase more shelves. However, I've purchased 280 more hooks to be cleverly positioned on the walls and from the ceiling.

Mary Ellen has two mis-matched shoes. She's upset. You would think with 175 pairs of shoes, something like two shoes that don't match wouldn't be a big deal. But don't tell that to Immelda!

Still no knife nor camera cable. The quest continues.

JIM