The Deal is Done

Our housing contract is signed, we've applied for the utilities, and finally (!) have a move-in date. We're set to go for this Friday. I go tomorrow to pick up the keys and drop off a load of things. It can't come too soon, especially because we found out today, after almost seven weeks of living in our government assigned temporary lodging, that we're not actually getting reimbursed for the entire amount of the room. It's a long and frustrating story as to why not and frankly, just makes me angry, so instead I'll focus on our other good news.

In addition to getting our house this week, we will also be picking up our second car (we hope). Although even that was not without it's drama. The car came into Livorno, which is about a six hour drive north. Having not heard anything in awhile, we emailed the company who shipped the car last Wednesday. On Friday, we received a reply from the customs agent in Livorno, with whom we'll be working, and he said, to paraphrase, "Your car came in this past Monday, and after six days, you will begin paying storage fees." Thanks for the heads up. In addition, he's not actually clearing the car into Italy as the shipping agent told us he would. He's giving us a temporary clearance. Then we have to drive it down to Naples, and hire a second custom's agent to give us a final clearance. Nathan and I both spent hours today working on this problem, each dealing with separate issues having to do with the car. But...insurance is secured, paperwork has been faxed, Crazy Dog care is arranged, transportation to the train station is set, and best of all, we have reservations at a highly-rated (in user reviews) B&B in the walled, Tuscan town of Lucca. It's only a half hour drive from Livorno, so since we have to spend the night up there, we decided to do it in a town so many have raved about to us. This will be our first weekend trip together here, and Nathan's first trip to Tuscany.

The blog is probably going to be updated slowly for the next few weeks. We will not have internet for a month or two. A friend just showed me how to make my iPhone an internet hub, but it will be pretty slow. I'm hoping it will be fast enough for me to at least upload to the blog, but I'm not sure how it will handle adding the pics. We'll just have to see how it goes - only four days, and I'll know!

First Hours

Author: Stephanie

We've now been in Napoli for five hours and what a whirlwind. We checked into the air terminal at the Norfolk Naval Air Station on Tuesday night. After checking our mountain o' luggage, we took Scully outside to walk and play for our final couple of hours. Since he'd been at the kennel for a week, we didn't want to put him in his airline crate until the last possible minute, even though the kennel manager told us they'd given him lots of extra treats and walks since it was his last visit. He also went to the dog bar-b-que at their pool, where (we were told) he spent two hours sitting directly by the grill (hotdogs on deck) rather than playing with the other 25 dogs in and around the pool. We have got to train him out of this obsessive begging.

We flew to Naples on a charter flight. The military contracts with commercial airlines to do flights like this, so we were on a normal airline (with a first class section, and sadly, we were NOT in it!). At our layover in the Azores, we landed on the Navy base for refueling, so everyone was off-loaded into a waiting terminal. It is hot there. Pretty...but hot. We, along with the other nine pet owners, were allowed to exit the terminal into a guarded, gated area where our pets had been delivered. We could take them out of their crates, walk them, let them drink out of huge bucket of water provided, and so on. Scully seemed just fine, so we didn't worry during our second leg. For the rest of the flight, I'd asked to move to a seat with a window since some folks had off-loaded for good in the Azores. Nathan elected to stay in his seat, meaning he got two seats to himself and I got the same. This allowed us to stretch out and get a little more rest. We had departed Norfolk after midnight on Tuesday night, and oddly, the flight crew served us dinner about 1am. Since it was long past dinner time for all the destinations of our plane (we had lots of stops, but thankfully, Naples was the second), I'm not sure why we got dinner rather than rest time, but food is food, so we ate it. By the time all of this was over, we only had about two hours of sleep prior to landing in the Azores.

We landed in Naples about an hour early, but our sponsors along with the wife of the Command's XO were waiting to greet us. Another odd event is that we did not go through customs. Families on PCS (Permanent Change of Station) orders were shuttled to a different line than the others on the plane. That visa I had to get (the one that almost didn't arrive in time) was stamped, Nathan showed his orders, and off we went to baggage claim, where Scully awaited and a customs agent did not. What a refreshing lack of bureaucracy.

Our sponsors had arranged for Scully to stay with the daughter of a government service worker here who has a great reputation for keeping dogs. They drove us far out of their way to her house to drop Scully off, where he raced around their humongous yard playing with their dog (Scully has a girlfriend now!) and drank copious amounts of pool water (glad he's not sleeping in my bed tonight!). Then we stopped by their house nearby, and got to see what a typical house available to us is like. One word: gorgeous! Tile floors with mosaic insets, beautiful wood trim, marble staircase, unique iron banisters, rooftop terrace with a view, gated yard. This just reinforced our deep desire to live out in town! They then drove us to the Navy Lodge where we're staying (none of these places are near each other, so our sponsors really went out of their way to help us, not just in this but in a number of other ways). Our sponsors also pushed the Navy Lodge on providing a date for when a pet room would be available to us (it's this Friday), so it's yet another great help. Many of the other pet owners on our flight who were getting off in Naples did not have lodging arranged at all and said they had not been able to secure lodging on base. Several of them were unsure where they were staying. If that had been us, my nerves would have been "all aflutter," in the words of Mrs. Bennett from the PBS version of "Pride & Prejudice," which I got to watch this week with Nathan's Aunt Lisa.

We are in a nice villa with two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a full kitchen, living room, laundry room, and outdoor terrace. We'll move to a similar villa on Friday with Scully and expect to live here for 6-8 weeks while awaiting housing (either on base or in town). We dined on parmesan cheese and wine from our sponsors and mac & cheese from the base chapel (the base chapel provides a Welcome Aboard bag which includes some food, and best of all, bottled water - tap water should not be drunk) while watching fireworks from the terrace. We couldn't actually see most of the fireworks due to a large building in the way, but the little we could see was a great welcome.

Tomorrow is a free day. We'll sleep late, go to the grocery store, and something else that I can't remember now due to extreme fatigue. Hopefully I'll remember tomorrow as I'm supposed to call our sponsor for help with it. Orientation begins Friday. Off to sleep now.

Last Minute

Author: Stephanie

We leave tomorrow and have had a great final week visiting family. We spent the last week at Nathan's aunt/uncle's house near Philadelphia, which included a visit with another aunt/uncle up from Alabama, errand running for all our last minute chores, an afternoon kayak trip, and yes, we did do the Segway tour in downtown Philadelphia. I did not fall off, crash, run into a tree, or any other such catastrophe. It was actually a lot of fun. I still can't believe that I made it through the entire tour with no disaster. Nathan is even more surprised. We took some good photos, but I don't have the camera hooked up to the computer right now - I promise to make a better attempt at including photos once we're in Italy! We're spending our last night in Baltimore at my sister's house and enjoying time with her kids (although Nathan is currently out at a sports bar watching the VA Tech football game - it's apparently an important game tonight). We had a little birthday dinner for Nathan since he'll spend his birthday tomorrow traveling to Norfolk and waiting around an airport lounge. I got to read my niece her nightly bedtime books, and my sister picked out "On the Night You Were Born," for me to read. Nathan & I gave our niece this book on the very night she was born, so naturally, I started crying while reading it, and then tried to make excuses for my niece to keep her from crying. Pretty much a mess all around.

Unfortunately and very true to form, we've had two last minute problems. I just have to say again how ready I am for this move to be over. I don't really expect everything to always go just right, but I do really need for things to go according to plan more often than having every single element end in chaos. Problem number one is in selling our car. Some of you may recall our plan of just stopping off at CarMax and selling the car to them. We'd heard this generally works quite well. I got all the blue book values for our car (taking mileage into consideration!) and had the numbers for the lowest value (private party, fair condition) to the highest (retail, excellent condition). As our car is in good condition, we hoped for an offer just over the lowest possible blue book value. The plan was then to get the appraisal (good for 7 days), spend our week in Philly, then drop off the car at CarMax on our way down to Norfolk to complete the sale. Great plan, except CarMax's offer was so low as to be laughable. Way, way, way too low. So we decided to try to sell the car ourselves on Philly's craigslist. I lasted approximately 4.5 minutes past the posting going live before reaching the panic zone, thus beginning to think of all sorts of contingency plans. It may have been less than 4.5 minutes. Let's go with 25 seconds.

The one we settled on is shipping the car to Italy. This is actually cost effective as we were buying a 2nd car over there anyway, and shipping our current car is cheaper. But this decision did not come without hours of discussion, obsessive checks of email for responses to craigslist post, getting the oil changed & brakes checked, taking the car to the Volvo dealership to see if they'd offer a better price (they didn't), emails to our sponsor in Italy, calls to the shipping agent, more obsessive email checks to see if the shipping agent had emailed back, obsessive phone calls to the shipping agent's office b/c there is only one agent in the office who could help us and she was not in that morning (turns out her child just started kindergarten, and the child did not handle it well, just in case you were wondering), and all sorts of other things that took time away from our relaxation time with family. But it's set, and hopefully all goes well tomorrow morning when we drop the car off at the Baltimore port. Who am I kidding? There's a slim chance this is going to work out as planned.

Problem number 2: We land in Naples at 7pm on Wed. night and will have to clear customs as well as pick up our mountain of luggage. Nathan made a reservation at the Lodge on base for a pet-friendly room. Few of the Lodge rooms are designated pet-friendly, so he was told to call the Lodge two days prior to our check-in to confirm a room is available. You can guess what's coming. No room. No room at the inn. And of course, the front desk chose not to answer their phone all morning, so we didn't reach someone until late late afternoon. We leave in the morning to head down to Norfolk and get our flight tomorrow night, which leaves us no time to make other arrangements. As it stands, we'll be landing after kennels have closed, have no reservation anywhere for the dog anyway, even if the kennel were still open, have no car to sleep in "just in case," and have more luggage than either of us have ever seen added to an extra large dog crate (and dog), guaranteeing that no taxi is going to be willing to take us to some hotel out in town. Not a clue what we're going to do. We have an email in to our sponsor over there for some recommendations, and I'm just praying there is some great solution that will miraculously occur. Sadly, I don't believe the military police will allow us to just spread out on a sidewalk somewhere. We're landing at the Naples airport though...I wonder how the Napoli police would take to us spreading out in an airport lounge for the night?

Temporary Digs

We're slowly settling into our temporary digs. After the fabulously, fun beach trip out to the shore, we spent a week shuttling back and forth between my cousin's house in a DC suburb and my sister's house in Baltimore, staying a couple of nights here, a couple of nights there, etc. We then had a wonderful weekend visiting friends who live near Roanoke. Great food (thank you, Sherry!), great talks, great outings. We then moved into our one month, temporary rental back in Old Town. We LOVE being back in Old Town. It feels like home. Our house is very cute with quite a lot of space for a temporary rental. We're just two blocks of Old Town's main drag, which has meant eating out most nights, although to our credit, that has included walking to Whole Foods (yes, walking! It's only four blocks to that wonderful, money-sucking, place) for a "pick out some yummy cheese and a baguette)" dinner.

Today, Armageddon hit DC. I haven't watched or read any local news yet, but I'm anticipating some amazing stories. One of the worst thunderstorms I've ever been in hit...and keep in mind that I grew up in south GA, which I'm pretty sure is the inventor of thunderstorms. This one was so bad that I actually took cover in the stairwell, along with the dog, because I was sure that something - tree, construction material, Toto - was coming through the window at any moment. Nathan left work at his normal time to ride home on the metro. At about the two hour mark, he called me from the bus he was on. The metro had stopped at one of its stops and never restarted due to trash across the tracks. He and a co-worker got on a bus to get back to Old Town, but it's route was diverted due to trees and light-poles lying across the roads! What? Nathan and his co-worker eventually made it to the restaurant/bar where they were headed, which is only two blocks from our old house, only to find that all lights were out at that end of town. So they walked twelve blocks to another popular place - and lights out at that end of town, too. So they headed up to the area where we now live for a last ditch attempt at a fancy, schmancy tasting room...one hour wait to get a table. I'd joined them at this point, so off we went to Whole Foods, which has a lovely generator to keep them operational and serving us delicious, healthy meals.

We're headed into our countdown now. At least once/day, I have the thought that it's only "x" days now. I feel all this pressure to see everyone, do everything in these last days. At the same time, I set some goals for myself for some projects I've been putting off for a few years, and on top of those, I'm starting an accreditation class which is going to involve quite a bit of studying. But knowing that we're living in the same house for the entire month has meant I've finally gotten some sleep! Yay! After three months of very little sleep, I'm now back to my much needed 8.5 hours. I thought that meant I would no longer be a crazy person when some moving crisis arose, but today has proven me wrong.

I called the military vet office to make the appointment for Crazy Dog to get his USDA vet-approved, international certificate, only to find that since our military flight has a layover in the Azores, we also have to follow any Azores pet importation rules. Except I couldn't find any instructions on this. In addition, due to the vet's scheduling, the only appointment available is exactly 10 days before our flight, no later (the certificate has to be within 10 days of flight), so nothing can go wrong. No delays, nothing. So I handled it in the calm, cool, and collected way that I've handled all of these irritations along the way - by calling Nathan, at work, in Red Alert panic mode while hyperventilating. He took care of the problem and my blood pressure has now returned to normal. I then spent the rest of day making inroads on one of my major projects and am now off to veg on the sofa with either a book or the TV. Nathan and Crazy Dog have gone to bed - CD is in my spot, which is where he goes every night, then growls at me when I try to move him. He would be very happy if I disappeared forever and he got Nathan, his True Love, all to himself. I think this is very odd, and a little off as well, for a dog, but others have assured me that most dogs pick their Person and this attachment is normal. I'm not convinced.

Sold!

Our house is officially no longer our house. Our buyer signed papers this morning. We had an odd signing schedule due to some deed recording legality which I don't really understand, nor do I care about it. The upshot was that our closing was moved to today from this past Friday, but we pre-signed on Friday. Our buyer began moving in at 9am on Friday (with our permission, of course!), but she did not sign papers until today. But living in the house for three days apparently did not scare her off, b/c she went through with it. It helps that she, too, was homeless as she sold her house (and papers were signed on Friday).

Our brains, or at least mine, are fried. Last week was truly the most stressful moving week we've ever had. If it could go wrong, it did. Even little stuff. And it was one of those weeks where you just keep thinking that something has got to just go right, even something little, but nope. Even our closing wasn't issue free as the settlement company forgot to have us sign two documents, and they remembered after we were an hour down the road towards the beach - at rush hour. Our awesome realtor worked it out for us to continue on to the beach, though, and made arrangements with a local realty office for us to sign out here. It's so nice to be out at the beach handling such tragic issues as one twin taking the toy truck away from the other one, or the three year old standing on the beach screaming b/c she doesn't want to walk, while staring at the three adults holding: two babies, three beach chairs, beach umbrella, inflatable pool, three beach bags, four towels, and one bag of sand toys. Truly tragic issues going on.

I'm confounded at how difficult this move has been. Since I'm on a list kick, I've been thinking about how many times we've moved. This move will be, in our 14 years of marriage, our 7th military move (this includes two military moves in Key West as we moved in, moved out due to hurricane damage to govt house, moved back in to govt house, moved out of govt house to Blacksburg, VA), and we've lived in 9 houses (including three apartments in San Diego / Coronado, and the hotel suite we lived in for six months in Key West - if it's more than three months, it counts as a house!). Nine houses in 14 years - that is just plain crazy! When we get our stuff in Italy, it will probably be ruined. Our moving company did not send enough crates for our load day, and told the crew they'd send out another truck later in the day. That didn't happen. So with the rest of our stuff sitting in the front yard, one of the movers had to make a three hour roundtrip (beginning at 5pm) to trade in the full crates for some empty ones. Thirty minutes before the truck returned at 8pm, the pretty, blue skies opened up and rained all over the stuff in our yard. It was so torrential, and accompanied with horrific, close-striking lightning, that we could not even move it inside. Nathan watched with complete glee, I'm positive, as the sofa he detests sat in the rain. It was covered with a tarp and sitting at the end of our neighbor's front pathway, which she had just had redone, complete with a concrete pour that afternoon. We watched as all the concrete washed out of her pathway right to our sofa. I think I heard Nathan actually chortling. He really, really hates that sofa. And when the new crates arrived, and the crew informed us that there wasn't enough room for the rest of the stuff and the sofa, meaning the sofa would have to go on the back of the flatbed (it's still raining at this point), I think Nathan might have actually laughed out loud. Meanwhile, the mover who went to get the fresh, new crates didn't think to cover their sides, so our wet stuff was loaded onto wet crates at 9pm, too late for me to call the military office who handles these types of issues. An inspector went out to the warehouse the next day for me and confirmed that yes, indeed, our stuff was "slightly" wet. The moving company assured him they would repack it, call me to let me know they'd done it, and then I could send out a new inspector. They didn't call me, so I talked to the head inspector today, and he said, "If they said they were going to do it, then they'll do it." I was astonished as in our week long dealings with this company, they did absolutely nothing they said they were going to do. I shared this information with him, but he assured me they would have done it and who I needed to call today at the company to talk to. I called, left a voicemail at 9am this morning, and surprise, surprise, did not get a call back today. I'm shocked, really. The written word may not be conveying the heavy sarcasm I feel.

I'm off now to see if the local bookstore is still open. I don't really know why as I brought about 20 books with me, but I did notice they're having a book signing this Thursday. I'd like to see the book and get the details. Then I'll spend the next five days going to the beach, riding by bike around this adorable, beach town, and playing with my niece and nephews.

Still no passport

So our countdown is really on now. Five days before the movers show up, 10 days until we sign closing papers on our house, six weeks before we actually cross the pond...maybe. To use a phrase I'm growing to hate: there's a small catch. My government passport has not arrived. You may recall, my regular passport had to be sent in with the government passport application, thus, I have no passport. No red one, no blue one. Which means I also do not have my permit/visa/whatever from the Italian consulate allowing me to move to their country (that the internet says takes up to three months to get). The lady handling my passport application has not returned Nathan's phone calls or emails in the last week, which frankly, is quite worrisome to me. In addition, the lady (perhaps a different lady? I really don't know) who is supposed to be scheduling our flight to Italy has not done so, nor is she returning Nathan's phone calls / emails. If it's not the same lady, then I'm sensing a real trend here. Nathan's response to my daily inquiries is that it's the summer season when everyone is moving overseas, so our "handlers" (my phrase, not his) have us on the backburner. But I'm a firm believer in the whole squeaky wheel cliche - be polite, but very, very squeaky.

At this point, we still have no clue whether we'll fly commercially (yuck - can you imagine the search we're going to have to go through with TSA on one way tix to Italy; we'll have to wear the good underwear that day) or on military transport. And if it's military transport, will it be the rotator flight out of VA Beach? In which case, we're going to be fighting for a hotel reservation with holiday vacationers having a last summer hurrah for Labor Day weekend at the beach (can't stay on base b/c of the whole dog issue...again; if that dog weren't so darn cute...).

Logistically speaking, I'm already exhausted with six more weeks to go. We have managed to avoid homelessness thanks to the kindness of relatives (and relatives of relatives). We sign closing papers next week and go to the condo of my sister's in-laws for the weekend. Nathan will return to DC and stay with my cousin and his family for five nights while I remain at the beach with my sister and her kids. It will be very 1950s with the women and children out at the beach colony for the week while the men are slaving away in the hot city and driving out on the weekends (as a note, my sister and I will be caring for a very active three year old and twin 17 month olds, so while we will be having picnics at the beach literally, figuratively, it won't be any picnic at the beach). The following week, Nathan & I (and Scully) will stay at my cousin's house. Then off we go to visit dear friends in Roanoke for a weekend before returning to take up occupancy in an adorable rental here in Old Town for the month of August. But for now, off to sleep, where I can dream about logistics, sleep fitfully, and then wake up at ODark:thirty, resulting in a complete crash on the sofa about 3pm until the dog shoves his nose into my face and whimpers b/c he has to go outside.

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!

Boring

I know it's been quite a while since I posted anything. Mainly because our life right now is pretty boring. Not boring to us, mind you, but would be really boring to all of you. Much like last week when I pulled out a vacation photo album to show a friend a few photos (only four pages, that's it - not the whole album!), and Nathan started rolling his eyes and making rude comments about looking at other folks' vacation photos. That's what it would be like for all of you to read a weekly post from me right now! Just not much going on.

A funny thing did happen in applying for my government passport. I have to get a government passport, even though I already have a regular passport (and as a side note, my traveling around Europe has to be done on my regular passport; the govt passport is just sort of...extra). But into the government passport has to be stamped a special Visa from the Italian Consulate. In filling out the passport application, I noticed the instructions to mail in my regular passport with the application. Why? This made no sense. So I called the handy, dandy 1-800 helpline, just to verify that they would actually send my regular passport back to me. The representative from the State Department who answered my call actually said to me, "We don't normally send back your passport, so just put a post-it on it requesting it back." A post-it! Are you kidding me! Nathan insisted I had to follow the instructions, so yes, I actually mailed off my passport with a post-it note taped to the front. In the days of iPad and Blu-ray and GPS, I have entrusted one of my most prized possessions, the thing that gives me freedom to move about the world, to a post-it note (and prayer). I'll let you know if I actually get it back.

We did go on our family visit vacation and had a great time visiting with all our family over the course of two weeks. Despite the fact that we'll hopefully see our families as often as we currently do, it was a weird feeling to say goodbye and know that we'll be across an ocean from them. Living in the continental US, even when we lived in southern California, there was always the knowledge that we could get in our car and drive "home." No matter what happened, as long as we had a car and gas money, we could get to family. Just having the ability to do such a thing can stave off homesickness. We've been reading books, articles, blogs, etc. about Italy and the rest of Europe, though, and are enjoying talking about all our, "It would be fun to..." plans. So far, we've come up with enough vacation plans to last us for two lifetimes, so we'll have to cram all of that into three years.

Once we're moved "over the pond," then I do intend to post weekly, at a minimum. Possibly more often. For now, just occasional updates. Next week, we should get our schedule for the actual flight. Because we'll be travelling with Crazy, I mean Scully the Dog, then we'll most likely be put on a military, Space-A flight. In doing some research, we found there is a military flight every two weeks out of the Norfolk area, so our guess is we will be put onto that. But who knows. This move is full of interconnected pieces, each one managed by a different person or office. I don't play chess, but I feel like a pawn right now, just being shuffled about the board, with each move depending on prior actions and anticipated future actions. Very confusing.

Moving Forward

I just realized that I never posted...our boat is sold! Mafalda will officially belong to another couple by this weekend. Actually, she's belonged to them unofficially for over two weeks now. We head out this weekend, during this gorgeous weather we've been experiencing, for a turnover sail. Mafalda will then return home to a new slip at the marina while Nathan & I drown our sorrows at the marina's tiki bar...or at least one of us will. The other one has to drive home (Kids, don't drink & drive...and stay in school). The day we sold the boat was NOT one of the happiest days of our lives, which just goes to show that you really can't trust a cliche.

In addition, tomorrow we sign the listing agreement for our house to go on the market as well. We were all set to list and felt great about the neighborhood "competition" until we found out that a townhome just a few doors down from us hits the MLS tonight...for significantly less than we'd planned for ours. Now we're having to hold off a bit in hopes that this place has a bidding war and goes quickly for well over list (for those of you in different parts of the country, that is actually fairly likely on our street, despite the housing meltdown).

I have a really cool picture to post here, but I'm lazy (really, really, really lazy) with photo organization). To the point that I don't even take them off the camera until the memory card is full. Anyway, the picture is of Nathan and his uncle working in a constant, unrelenting downpour last weekend to get our planter box (large, 3' high, built-in planter box) shortened and off our neighbor's property. They succeeded, although they had to battle the rain and mud that Uncle Ted said was more like cement than mud. Since I spent Monday putting in all new plantings in said planter box, I can now attest to the fact that this mud is no ordinary mud. It's evil and pervasive and still under my fingernails. I returned home from babysitting my three lovies to find they had not just thrown in the proverbial towel and headed down to the local pub. Amazing! Thanks, Uncle Ted!

In other news, Nathan has had an order modification, meaning we now will not leave for Italy until September. I have no idea whether we'll go early or late. I loved it when our Realtors (they're a partnership team) looked at us quizzically and asked where we'd go if the house sells quickly. My response: "I've lived in hotels plenty of times before and for a lot longer than a couple of months." Now finding one that will take Nutjob, I mean Scully, might prove a little more challenging. When we were first moving to the DC area and despaired of ever finding that home that was perfect for us, Nathan suggested we live in a "van down by the river." I suppose we could always revert to that plan, although we have a station wagon, not a van. It would probably be pretty comfy though.

Orders Arrived

Nathan got his actual, written orders. This means it's truly official, so now the hoopla begins: government passports, overseas health screenings, setting up personal property moves, and so on. And the biggie, we can actually list our house. We plan to do so in a month to give us time to finish all those projects I've already talked about.

And in bigger news, our boat is sold! I don't think the saying is true that the best two days in a boat owner's life are the day he buys the boat the day he sells it. We're pretty sad to be saying goodbye to Mafalda. We will be especially sad this summer during sailing season when we're spending our weekends in the city and dreaming of sitting in Mafalda's cockpit, at anchor, in a beautiful, Chesapeake cove. But, it's a load off of us in that our marina slip was up at the end of March, and we had no other arrangements. So now, only the house and car to go.

In the beginning...

Welcome to my blog. It will be pretty boring to start (well, it will probably be boring all the time) since we don't move until August, but we have lots to do to prep for it.
It's starting to sink in that we're actually, finally, really going to be moving to Europe. After 14 years of hoping, the dream will come true. I've been pushing to the backburner of my mind all the things that have to happen first, mainly, selling our townhome in Old Town Alexandria...and our sailboat...and a car.

Now I'm not truly worried about any one of those things, but what keeps me up at night are the thoughts of our military pack-outs, pack-outs in the plural (pack-out is the term used when the movers come "pack-out" all your belongings, load them on the truck, and take them to mysterious warehouses where very odd things get lost or broken, such as an ugly, already broken, beat down step-stool that no one in their right mind would actually want except for you, while the boxes you've pointed out to the movers and suggested could "fall" off the truck are delivered safe and sound, move after move after move). But back to our overseas pack-outs...as I understand it, we will have three. One for items to go in Long-term storage, the Main pack-out going on slow-boat travel, and the Express shipment of items we can't live without for our final 2-3 months here.

The problem lies in the fact that we live in a small, 2 bedroom townhome. I love all the helpful advice I get that goes something like, "What you do is designate 1-2 rooms of your house where you put all your long-term storage items, close the door, and put a big sign on the door designating it for your storage pack-out." My husband and I live IN THE CITY. We don't have extra rooms! We could use the 2nd bedroom for this, but selling our house quickly and for lots & lots of moolah depends on the thing looking pristine, clean, free of clutter. I'm not sure the one and only 2nd bedroom filled to the gill with crap (I mean, cherished belongings) that WE don't even want to take to Italy with us is the best way to accomplish our sales goal.

Problem #2: When we first got the news of our move, we started house dreaming. Lots of folks who'd been stationed over there told us all about their lovely villas, views of the Mediterranean, wonderful landlords, and so on. Exciting, right! Then we find all incoming families are required to live in base housing. Okay, we'll still be living in Italy, so we're good. Problem is that the housing ranges from a spacious, 3-level townhome w/garage to a 1200 sq.ft. apartment into which is fit 3 bedrooms/2 bathrooms. And we'll have no clue which we'll be in until we arrive in August! How on earth do I pack (or send to storage) for these two ends of the spectrum? Nathan's answer is to take nothing, so for those of you thinking you might actually have a bed to sleep on when you visit, well...no guarantees.