The past three days have been a wash.  We have boxes. We have tape.  We have stuff to pack.  My day goes like this.  Get up.  Yesterday it was at 4am, the day before, 2am.  I sit at the computer for a while and waste time on Facebook.  I drink coffee.  I go out on the deck and stare at the barn.  When that gets boring, I come in and sit at the computer again.  In between Facebook entries, I pack a box.  For a few days it has been books.   After the last piece of tape is applied, I come back to the computer and see if anyone has taken pity on me and posts something or sent me an email. Why is Ravelry suddenly so dead?  I need to see something new.

I succeeded in packing almost 1000 books.  There are still about 400 to go.  I am trying to dust them and pick the dead spiders off the jackets as I go.  Why do I have some of these books?  Several hundred are going to the public library sale on Monday.  Among the discarded titles are best sellers from the 1800’s; Holy Living and Dying, Bible Stories of Egypt, a duplicate set of Dickens.  Newer unwanteds include The Best Sermons of Jimmy Swaggert, Roth’s Complete Vascular Surgery, Jim Fix’s Running, first edition.  There are also at least two hundred pounds of nursing books that don’t mention AIDs, outdated pricing books for china and antiques, and a whole series of Christmas Ideals magazines.

After my rear starts to hurt from sitting too long, I get up and pack a box.  Sometimes I don’t pack the whole thing.  I’ll come back sit, and then finish it later.  Yesterday, I fell asleep for about ten minutes, probably from lack of sleep.  That was enough, I got up and packed an entire bookshelf.

Then I did two cabinets of china in the kitchen.  Why do I have this stuff?  We eat off of glass bowls we found at Columbus Flea Market twenty years ago.  I have a huge set of Spode Queens’ Bird that was a 25th anniversary gift from my dad to my mom, and another complete set of Wedgewood Turquoise Florentine (turquoise was always my favorite color) that is my wedding china.  You can see through it, so delicate is the porcelain, so of course, there is no way I would ever use it.

I asked Jennifer if she wanted the Wedgewood and thankfully, she said yes.  She has been slowly asking for things I have, like small Majolica vases I have collected for more than thirty years.  Recently she requested something I forgot about; Lobster plates.  These are also a Majolica type of china.  The dishes look like cabbage leaves with a red, dimensional lobster toward the edge.  I’m not sure why I even have these things!  I think I started a lobster collection one time, after I had completed my pink flamingo collection.  Oh where the heck it that!!!???  I just asked Jim and he said maybe in the barn.  Don’t tell me there is more stuff out there I haven’t found.

This morning, I packed another kitchen cabinet;  one with appliances.  My appliances read like a roster of friends and family.  My slow cooker and bread maker came from my friend, Heidi, who gave them to me when she made a cross country move about four years ago from Tinton Fall, NJ, to Whidbey, Island, WA.  That is about as Coast to Coast as you can get.  She gave them to me so she didn’t have to take them across the country!  I, however, am not as wise as she.  The slow cooker is going to the RV; the bread maker I may have to give away.  I don’t eat bread, so it makes sense to donate it.  OH!  Jim just informed me that I already gave it to the Vietnam Veterans.  One less decision to have to make.

My juicer, food processor, and mandoline came from my son.  My pasta maker came from my mother.  Jim bought me the blender.  (He loves the appliance row at Target.)  I can’t get rid of things that were gifts from people I love.

While I am writing this, the TV is on.  It is midday, I have been sporadically packing, and am hoping a post will propel me to pack some more.  One of the ads is for Visa, and they have scored the ad, which are quite funny vignettes of people dancing, to Rick James Super Freak.  Poor Rick James.  I’m always happy when someone uses his music.  He needs the royalties.  However, that catchy little tune is going through  my head now, energizing me.

I better get motivated here.   There is some wisdom in starting to pack six weeks before a  move.  It will take me that long to get finished.