Folks who move a lot often tell or are told the following joke:
"Opening boxes is great! It's like Christmas" Good-natured laughter usually follows.
Well, I'm writing tonight to tell you it is not like Christmas. Christmas is a lovely, relatively short period of time when people are given gifts that are either small enough to be carried or large enough to be so totally awesome (Pony!) that it doesn't matter. Christmas has cookies. Christmas has cheerful wrapping paper to induce holiday cheer. Christmas has the possibility of shiny new gift cards.
Opening moving boxes has none of this.
First, unpacking takes all of eternity. Kristin! You exaggerate! Yes and quite often but possibly not this time. Many people have told me of unopened boxes moved from garage to garage. You, kind reader, might have a few yourself. (If not, can I send you some?) Moving boxes also tend to be heavy, dusty, a blandish brown with brown tape, are gift cardless and never contain any cookies that you really would want to eat.
PLUS if these boxes have been in storage for a year they could be filled with things that you completely forgot you had/don't need anymore/replaced last month or are soooooooo yucky that you wonder why you even let it in the house. I'm looking at you mis-matched Americana Christmas fingertip towels from 1999.
I kvetch (love that word) but things are getting better. The apartment is at the glorious point where we could "live" with the chaos. I wouldn't want to let anyone see it but we could "live" with it. Big progress considering two weeks ago the apartment looked like this:
Bedroom with sleeping dog
Kitchen with plotting cat
Office with leaning tower of boxes
and Spare Bathroom, or as I told the movers,"The Book Box Bathroom"
So you will just have to trust me that everything is
100 times better and looks
1000 times worse because things are out of the boxes and I'm finding places for it all. Much of it going to the Salvation Army across the street or Catholic church up the road. (Crossing my fingers for the return of indulgences!)
It's nice actually. We can see things coming together. We can sit on our couch and sleep on our bed. We also find little jokes left by movers. The box in the upper right of this photo for example.
Yulp, that says, "Sweaters and Garden Hose" Odds are we aren't going to be wearing those sweaters. All's well. Come visit anytime and take things home with you. (Dog and cat not included in offer.) (Husband negotiable.)
and Delphi continues to tolerate us all until she can figure out how to open the food canister by herself.
