Down to the wire...

Well, this is it. Approximately 12 hours from the time I'm typing this, a truck will arrive to pick up our boxes. I'm still packing (at least I will be, having just stopped for a few hours nap), but there is now a most definite light at the end of the tunnel. I just had to move a few boxes to see it.

The pile of stuff being left behind is definitely growing. Some thing are temporary - I have a sewing machine that I definitely don't want to get rid up, but just don't want to pack and ship. There's a growing pile of clothes for freecycling. I never did sell off the bulk of my furniture. I hope my parents will be able to enjoy at least some of it. I am constantly catching myself finding one more thing still on a wall, still in a shelf, hiding in a corner. Amazingly, I'm still finding piles of books to pack. I knew we had a lot of books, but I hadn't realized just how spread out they all were.

And then there are the last few things that won't be packed, but will go with us in the car. The computer. The bundle of boken, shinai and jo staffs. The sword. The badminton rackets. The golf clubs (my husband will have to share his caddy with his daughter, as there's no way I can fit two in there. We've got a big trunk, but not *that* big! *L*) Then there's the 3 bikes to go on a rack on the back - one of the very last things to be set up.

It's with relief that we were finally able to adopt out our rescued kitty to a sweet older couple from the city who's current cat is 15 yrs old and may not be in this world much longer.

My biggest concern right now is weight. My budget allows for 1000 pounds, and I don't have a scale. My little bathroom scale can barely handle me or the kids, never mind boxes and storage bins of the sizes we have. I'm hoping one of my brothers can come by with a truck and the old meat scale my parents have - that thing itself weighs about 200-300 pounds. It's on wheels and I was able to get it to the door of where it's stored (in the spare house in my parents' yard... gotta love country living. *L*) but we still need a truck, something to use for a ramp (we are NOT lugging that thing down stairs, then lifting it back up into a truck!) so we can wheel it directly into the truck, then directly into our house. Once I have that, I can weigh my boxes and if I do go over 1000 pounds, I'll have to decided which ones to leave behind. Ironically, it's the smallest boxes that concern me. Those, of course, are the ones with the heaviest items. Books. My FIL thought I was nuts when I told him we had two encyclopedia sets (that's not even counting the specialized sets). Don't we have the internet? He asks. Well, yes, but sometimes things are still easier and faster to look up in a book. Still, it looks like we might not have quite as many boxes as I thought. The fact that I'm using 4 large storage bins and a few other larger boxes probably made the biggest difference there. Most of the boxes I have are relatively small, and one of those bins would need probably 5 -6 boxes to pack the same things. Especially the odds-n-sots that would take up so much space while not allowing for very many other items to be packed with them. I still can't figure out what to do with our Spirit Shield. I don't think it'll fit in even our largest boxes. I hope I'll be able to get it into the trunk with the rest.

Meanwhile, I still have one last shift of work after this! It's the last night training my replacement, too. I really feel for the store. This guy is *not* ready, and the more time I spend with him, the more I think he won't ever *be* ready. He doesn't seem to have any short term memory, but won't use the notes I gave him where what he needs to do is spelled out step by step. After leaving my binder at work for him but forgetting to tell anyone why I'd left it, I came back to discover the store manager had photo-copied the whole thing. It seems she liked my notes so much, it's now going to be *the* book for staff to use. I found that rather funny.

Well, it's past 4:30 am. Time to get some food in me, then get back to work. The girls are still sleeping. Hopefully, I can be done before they wake up - at least with the stuff the truck will be picking up.

After that, it's count down time again. A couple of days to clean. One last pay check to pick up. One last family gathering to get to. We'll be on the road on the 17th.

I won't pack up the computer for a couple days yet. Since it's going in the trunk, I can keep it set up to talk to my husband on MSN while he's at work for a bit longer. Even he commented last night that we talk more now than we did when we were together. I pointed out that when we *are* together, we hardly ever talked at all. Real conversations were getting few and far between. He agreed that we need to keep that from happening again. We'll see. It's far too easy to get complacent.

Oh, I almost forgot. Once we're there - the car is going to be repossessed! We're still not sure what happened there. We'd made the arrangements and haven't missed a single payment since. No phone calls to worn us (or threaten us). Then out of the blue, my husband gets a phone call from a sheriff (yes, we do have those in Canada, but they're not the same thing as in the US). It seems he'd beed looking for the car but couldn't find it. Well, it being in another province might have something to do with that. My husband asked him why it was being repossessed, but of course, the sheriff didn't know. He gave my husband some toll free phone numbers to call, only they weren't any use to him - he got a recording saying the numbers couldn't be reached from where he was, so I assume they're in our home province. So my husband put a stop payment on the check he just wrote to the bank that's financing our car, called the sheriff back and told him when the car would be in our new city. The guy seemed pretty taken aback by our reaction to it, and actually told us to just call him early in the week I arrive with the girls, giving us a few days, at least, to settle in. I doubt he gets a lot of people who are so co-operative about getting their cars repossessed. Quite fankly, once we're in the city, we don't care anymore. We'll have access to public transit. Plus, if the bank is going to screw around with us like this - well, we don't play those games. They can have the car. We'll take the almost $1000 a month that will be freed up once we no longer have car payments, insurance payments, maintainance costs and, of course, gas to buy - not to mention the cost of a parking space at the apartment block we'll be living in. We like the car, but cars can be easily replaced. It's not worth the hassle. The move is stress enough, thank you very much.

Well, now I've really babbled on. It's almost 5 am. Got to go! I should be able to post at least one more time before the computer is dismantled and our phone line is closed. If not, then the next time I post will be from our new home.