One Load Gone

We will post some photos of Nathan's trip to Naples soon. We have not had a chance to even sit down and look at them together yet. Maybe tonight. If one of us doesn't fall asleep at 7:30 as has happened quite a lot lately.

Our first load of stuff has been taken away from our house. Gone, gone, gone. I love it. This pack-out is destined for long-term storage. Really, it does beg the question, if we don't need it for the next three years, why do we need it at all? I have had that refrain running through my head for the past week as I've been squeezing my way past piles of stuff in every single room (I had to pull it all out of the basement and unpack it from my completely unsuitable for a move storage bins).

I had a great pack-out crew with only two incidents. The first was I spent the entire day going from room to room saying, "I would like that put into a box." The crew just was not using boxes. Lots of things they just wrapped in padded paper. So odd. All became clear at the end of the day. As I signed off on the paperwork, the crew boss showed me where he inventoried the # of boxes used, and said, "I didn't include the boxes you added at the last minute b/c you'll get charged extra." What? We don't pay for our moves. I never even thought about the crew just trying to save me money by using less boxes. So kudos for their thoughtfulness, but this is my seventh, military move. Boxes keep things from getting broken or going missing, and boxes cost a whole lot less than having to pay for something missing or broken. Next time, I'll alert the crew ahead of time. This is never anything a crew has ever worried about before.

The second issue was a biggie, and also a first for me. I had a pile of framed artwork headed into storage on one side of the living room. On the other side of the living room are the pieces we're taking with us. The crew packed the right pile, but I kept noticing one particular piece was not packed. I kept moving it to piles of stuff waiting to packed, telling the person packing an area that it needed to be packed, etc. At the end of the day when I did the final walk-through to make sure all was packed, I noticed a familiar frame sticking out of the pile going to Italy with us. Sure enough, when I go over and start flipping through the art, hidden amongst all the rest are two pieces that had been in the stack to be packed, one of which was the piece I'd been taking to the crew all day long and reminding them to pack it. And these two weren't leaning in the front as if someone placed them there and forgot them. No, they were tucked in amongst a pile of about 20 other pieces. They hid them from me so as to not have to pack them! How crazy is that. My only guess is the last art box packed was full, and they didn't want to use a new one for only two pieces. It all goes back to the box issue!

The "big" move begins a week from Monday. It's a three day ordeal, then a day to clean the house, and on July 16th, we will hopefully be signing our settlement papers on the house. The buyer won't actually sign her bits until Monday as there was some scheduling issue with the title company. Since we're off to the beach on Friday, our realtor (we loved our realtors, the Blumel Adams Group) arranged for us to sign ahead of time. We're still waiting on the appraisal to come back, so we're not in the free and clear yet. This area is really tricky with appraisals, so I'm basically turning into a complete basket case after having almost zero anxiety on the whole house selling issue. I hope we get it soon and can at least move forward, whether it's good news or bad news!