Death by Packing

Packing is killing me . . . damn.

We started off kind of slowly–doing a couple of boxes of books a day, labeling them neatly and stacking them precisely–just the way I like it : )  I was feeling accomplished, in charge . . . competent, if you will.

I was none of the above.

Wednesday came and proved that I had nothing on packing.  Packing was kicking and would always kick my tuckus.

Denis and I spent literally all day working on the kitchen.  We went out once to open up our new bank accounts (with Citibank we will only get screwed out of 2% of each withdrawal we make overseas . . . yeah!) and eat, but other than that, it was all work, all the time.  Not only was the actual packing difficult (I have so many randomly sore muscles and cuts and bruises from the boxes) but parting with our beloved, well, stuff, was hard, too.  I know one shouldn’t get attached to material things, but come on, I can’t help myself.  Denis and I have worked hard on nurturing our various collections of cups, plates, and magnets–It was hard to part with them.

  

These are a few of our favorite cups . . . the “Dessert Diaries” ones have recipes on the back : )

Whatever, you probably think I am crazy, but if the cups make me happy, so be it . . . at least I don’t collect cats : )

The kitchen boxes required much more strategy than the book boxes did.  I am like the packing nazi; Denis runs everything by me before he actually packs it as to avoid my wrath.  But with this move it is even worse.  Who knows when we are going to see this stuff again.  It is going to be festering in a Mahwah storage unit for possibly three years, and then it will have to endure a move to NYC–that can’t be a happy ride for breakable items.

    

You have no clue have much we (carefully) stuffed into that box.  Every draw and cabinet in our kitchen looks like this now . . . except for the food cabinet, but now we have nothing left to cook with : ) These are only some of the evil kitchen boxes–there are much larger ones lurking further down that same wall.  I think the packing finally got to Denis.  This is one of my packing wounds . . . four days later.

So now we have to move on . . . decoration stuff, clothing, and then the worst part–for anyone who has ever had to move before, I think you will know what I am talking about–the random stuff that is left over.  There are boxes everywhere; most of your belongings are being good little belonging boys and girls and waiting patiently in their respective containers, but then there are the renagades.  The miscellaneous items that evaded the packing process by lurking in the dark recesses of your home while everything else was being properly labeled and organized.  Ugg, I dread that last day.

But at least I got these:

 

On Friday, Aliki and I did what we do best . . . meet at malls to eat and shop.  We switched things up this time and went to Riverside Square.  After a great lunch, the shopping began.  There is nothing like shopping with Aliki–I have never had such successful trips before, with some seriously good conversation mixed in : )

After making a killing at Cole Haan, J.Crew, and Banana Republic, we made it to Pottery Barn.  TWO birthdays ago, my sister had given me a Pottery Barn gift certificate that I almost used for a huge furniture order, but then the phone people pissed me off, and I ended up never making the purchase.  I guess the gift certificate didn’t approve because it went into hiding after that and didn’t come out until about a month ago.  While it is not exactly the best time for me to be making PB purchases, I figured I better use the gift card before it disappeared forever.  We were wandering around for a while when, in this random back corner of the store, we found a travel accessory display.  I was able to get those luggage tags and the green patent-leather travel folio for our passports and such.  How fun was that.

I met Aliki at 12:00 that day, and I got back home at 5:00.  I don’t think we have ever had a trip shorter than four hours.  If it weren’t for her anniversary and the impending doom of traffic, God knows how long we would have talked : ) I will miss our mall trips . . . a lot : (  

Happy 4th Anniversary, Aliki and Mike!