Moving Moments

In two weeks, I relocate two streets over, but even when the distance is that short, the job of moving, isn't. Whether it's two blocks or two countries away, there is still the same amount of packing up. Eschewing the costs of moving, there is the hard labour of it. All that nice space you once had will turn itself inside out. What is inside will come outside, into boxes and onto your floor. All of those wonderful cabinets and shelves and cupboards spew out their contents and now, you wend your daily way throughout a massive collection of what once was hidden away. Where to put it to for packing? We are not yet at the practical system of supplying re-usable cartons, sadly.  We  use paper. Some persons haunt liquor store outlets searching for small, handy cartons that are ideal. But I, having done that a few years previously, in rain and hot sun, no thanks. For a few hundred, you can forgo taking your car out to the narrow backs of stores and avoid the dark looks of drivers as you dodge their semis needing to enter the tight alley spaces where we cardboard hunters lurk. This time I opened up my wallet instead of my ire, and bought the gamut. My kitchen island is now topped with wrapping paper, tape and boxes in the process of being folded for use. In spite of my hoped for smart powers of organization, I find myself searching for the scissors and/or tape and/or black marker, constantly in my day.  My life begins after the coffee, oats and fruit necessities, of lifting, lugging, hauling and pushing the dregs of a lifetime, mine, here and there and then, into cardboard. Ironically,  I will eventually, move into cardboard, too. But hopefully, not before I get myself moved to my earthly new address. I began this endeavor about month ago when all was calm. It was still calm when the moving planner chap arrived and went about assessing how much cardboard and paper would do the packing up job. These days one's own things stay in one's own cabinets and drawers. The movers  simply wrap them up and cart them off. That part is easy. What's not in your own cupboards and shelves, is the center of the problem. It has to be boxed. If you are not a six footer, how high the cartons can be piled, is another factor. I am now cognizant of  what is a 1, 2, or 4 cuber. I have almost got the tape wrangling down pat instead of stuck around my wrists and fingers. I can fold a big box that was once a piece of flatness, into three dimensional things where a lifetime of "stuff" will go. Making boxes up is kind of like doing what we used to called Chinese Puzzles. The puzzles were pieces that fit uncannily together, or apart, with intricate precision. I wasn't good at that either or so my Dad said. My boxes are, to say the least, unique. The 2s are manageable but the 4s, are devious. On one folding venture of a 4, I almost broke two pendant lights and a bar stool. What adds to the fun, are the last couple of weeks which is where I am now. This is when you can forget the cardboard because the human element enters: the legal folk, the realtors, the buyers and the sellers, the forms to fill out and the nervous nights when you have taken down the drapes and the street lights beam in. Rest assured. In a week it will all be over. But wait. There's the unpacking.