This Is My House

Yes, this is how it looks. Nearly everything wrapped up in brown paper, ready to be loaded in a shipping container and sent to Hawaii. I won't see this stuff again for over three weeks.

This is my room.

And this is Jerry, my packing guy. When he saw me with the camera he said, "Are you taking pictures of my beautiful work? Here, get me in the picture too!" So there he is. He was the best packing guy ever. If you need to ship 8000 pounds of stuff to Hawaii, he's the one to call.

This is my kitchen. Nothing in the cupboard. Everything on the counter and soon to be in a box. We're happy we have several friends who have invited us over for dinner for the next few days so I don't have to cook any more.

And THESE are all the boxes I packed when I thought I was the one who would be doing the packing. I knew my husband's new employer was paying for our shipping container and for movers to load up 8000 pounds of stuff, but I didn't know they were paying for packing as well.

If I had known they were doing the packing, would I have sorted everything so well? Probably not. The big question was, did we get in under our weight limit? We had to pay for anything over 8000 pounds. We knew that after the truck left for the scales, there would be no way for us to have them bring it back and unload things. We asked Jerry to call us as soon as they weighed the truck and give us the news.

After the truck pulled away, we went to pick up our five-year-old from his friend's house. While we were there, we got a phone call. It was Jerry.
"Well, guys, bad news. We went over," Jerry said.
"How much?" my husband asked.
"It's 12,000 pounds."
My mouth dropped open. What had gone wrong? I'd sorted everything so carefully, given away so much. 12,000 pounds! How much was that going to cost us?
"Gotcha," Jerry said.
My husband laughed.
I moaned and collapsed on the nearest couch, "He got me! He got me! I believed him!"
"It was 8400. You're good," Jerry said.
Hooray! Seven people living in a four bedroom house for six years, and I got all our junk down to 8400 pounds.
See you in Hawaii!