It has begun!

As I sit here at my computer, leisurely updating my blog, there are three burly men upstairs packing up the bedrooms.  I'm having a Moment.  

I'm remembering moves from the past, in which it took me a solid two weeks to pack up our things.  It was two weeks of forcing myself to go through closets, drawers, bookshelves, and cupboards, wrapping dishes in newspaper, and hoping I had enough boxes.  Then we got to live in Boxland, where inevitably we needed something that had already been packed in the bottom of a box somewhere, but it required unpacking a couple of boxes in order to find the right box.  Then, I got to repack them all.

And even before that, I spent weeks loitering around grocery store dumpsters, searching for produce boxes with the least amount of brown lettuce sludge.  I learned that liquor stores are good box sources, as the boxes are heavy duty, although they can smell like booze.  I remember inhaling the beer/wine/spirits fumes, hoping it would take the edge off my stress.  It didn't.

And once all the boxes were packed and the furniture moved, it was always a shock to see the absolute FILTH we'd been living in.  Under the fridge, behind the TV, in the back corners of my kitchen cupboards...I'll spare you the details.  No matter how much I tried to clean beforehand, I always felt assaulted by the amount of cleaning that still needed to be done.  And this, after weeks of lurking in dumpsters and packing for hours every day.  It gives me a stomach ache just thinking about it.

So, allow me my Moment.  Sometimes angels take the form of three grinning, sweaty German men who smell like smoke and aren't fazed by the mess under Jessica's bed.  And their flaming chariot is a truck full of pristine packing boxes, bubble wrap, and packing paper.  This is pretty much my version of heaven this week.