House is packed
That is one song that almost always bring me to tears. If you haven’t figured it out, I am talking about, “Leaving on a Jet Plane” by Peter, Paul and Mary, also sung by John Denver and probably many others. Now that I am the loyal (as of one month) Mac user that I am, I recommend checking it out at your nearest iTunes for a good cry. As you can see from the picture, our bags our packed.
Today is the second day that the movers were at our house. They packed a very small subset of our belongings, of which we had distinguished, into an “air shipment” box that consisted of 80 cubic feet of stuff…mostly clothes, cooking pots, pans, my espresso machine, our printer and a few other random necessities. We also get a “surface” or boat shipment that will probably arrive in Shanghai in 2007 with a few other things like our spin bike, some games and other necessities that aren’t as necessary as the stuff in the air shipment.
Then there are five large (and I mean large) bags and a box for the computer at which I am currently typing (my iMac) along with our two laptop bags which has been termed “accompanied baggage” for us to have with us on the plane.
So, as you can imagine, our lives for the last week have been categorizing everything we own into “air”, “surface”, “storage” and “accompanied baggage.” I breathed a huge sigh of relief yesterday when all of this categorization was complete and the only major thing to be put in the wrong pile by accident (and it was too late to salvage it) was our camera. Kind of a big thing but as you can see by the picture on this page that I took five minutes ago, our old one with the shattered screen still takes decent pictures. And the good camera will arrive with the air shipment.
Tonight will be the first of a week of nights at a local hotel. I imagine it will be strange staying at a hotel in Boise. The color-coded spreadsheet of things to do is now almost all green (meaning the tasks are completed.) I now have new jeans, running shoes, undies, tampons (apparently they don’t exist in China or at least not the brands they sell here), face wash, medicine, an iPod and everything else I determined would be either difficult or impossible to buy in China. You should have seen the face of the girl at Target when I loaded a years supply of tampons onto the check out belt. I think she was scared of me.
All of the accounts with local businesses such as the power company and newspaper have been canceled. About the only thing left is to transfer a warranty for our car to the new owners, Andy’s parents, and to sell the truck. But we have mostly given up on selling the truck now because apparently the world does not appreciate an awesome 2005 Ford F-150 at a low low price. We will keep it and continue to leave it on the market for awhile, but if it does not sell, have a great vehicle to come back to.
The “lasts” have commenced and thankfully Andy keeps reminding me that they are not really “lasts” and also that there will be a lot of new “firsts.” Last night was our “last night sleeping in our house” for awhile. Yesterday was my “last time cooking breakfast” at our house (and with eggs whose yolks are not dark yellow, which I was told are better because they are not modified by the farmer in some way).
Plans are already under way for our “first” trip to the beach in China. And although it is not a last (hopefully) or a first, I cannot wait to have one more night at the Grand Hyatt before we move into our apartment on the 21st of this month. We have started saying good bye to people and had a teary dinner with my grandparents on Sunday. The good byes and tears will continue until we truly are leaving on the jet plane. But at least we know when we will be back again…AND WE ARE REALLY EXCITED!
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