A Month of Change

We are pretty settled into life, even if most of our stuff has yet to be moved. Trying to keep up three locations is ridiculously difficult. I am scheduling meetings in the city while applying for jobs in both Mammoth and Carson City and attempting to spend time with the hubby. We are very lucky to have the support of friends and family as we navigate the constant change we are experiencing.

We had a wonderful anniversary weekend in Tahoe where we pretty much did nothing. I never thought doing nothing could be so good, but after all the upheaval it was very much worth it. Of course, it was strange to walk downstairs in the hotel and find out the convention in town was the California Coroner's Association. But we made it through our first year. Jobs, lost jobs, 2 moves and hopefully on the path to a little bit of settling...but life always throws a curveball or two, right?

Then it was back down to the city for back to back meetings and packing. I was able to attend a going away Thanksgiving for Brett, Stace and Kyla. They are off to Morocco and I can't wait to visit. It was great getting to hang out and drink some wine. Then, last meeting on the way out of town was at Sony. Imagine driving your truck, filled with boxes onto the lot. Furniture, boxes and junk were spilling over the edge. The gate guard thought I was dropping stuff off for production when I had to explain it was merely my stuff. He definitely looked at me with a puzzled expression, wondering if I was homeless I am sure.

Met the hubby in Mammoth for some wooding. I said that to my Dad and he thought it was a cute term for hiking. No, this means pulling out chainsaws, going into the woods and cutting apart wood for winter heat. Then I think my Dad just thought I was crazy. John and Cheree came to help us with the second day of wooding. We averted dropping the truck down a large embankment due to John's calm demeanor, got the truck and trailer out of the sand with lots of back and forth rocking and at the end of the day headed into town for yummy Mexican food.

I was suddenly reminded of what it is like to live in a small town as we ran into two old friends back to back. It was nice to see friendly faces again. Needless to say...got all the work done and now it is back to work! Hopefully things will calm down over the next few weeks and one of the jobs I want will pan out. Sorry I don't have anything particularly funny to talk about, but I am sure I will find something in the very near future.....

Packing

So you think you know your new husband, right? So you've been told girls are crazy and indecisive, right? I challenge both those assertions as proven by trying to pack and move together for the first time. Packing is complicated enough with one person, but with two you have compounded the problem exponentially. Now, mathematically I know that sentence makes no sense, as 1 to the second power is actually less than 1 multiplied by 2, but I am thinking it is an exponent more in line with the number of years you have lived in the place you are moving out of as stuff seems to breed other stuff.

Not only are you likely to have different opinions about what is valuable or not, you also seem to be married to a man who at one point says, "throw it all out," and then flips out every time you are getting rid of something...I refer to a dolphin statue. The conversation goes a little something like this:

"But you love dolphins."

"Yes, I do. But it just sits around catching dust and I am not attached to it."

"You can't throw it out because of me."

"I'm not, I am giving it away because I don't care about it enough to move it."

"You have to keep it."

"I don't want to keep it."

"Why are you keeping the other one then?"

Now how does one tactfully answer this question? You see I have gotten myself in a bit of a pickle at this point. I no longer care about the other dolphin statue because it is from an ex-boyfriend who, while we stayed friends at first, is now married and no longer allowed to speak to other girls. He kind of ceased to be important in my life at that point, thereby neither is the product of his trip to the Mall of America. The other statue is from the family of my college roommate and I love them so I love the nick knack. It is worth the dusting time, bubble wrap time, and general moving.

BUT, in order to say this I have to admit, aloud, I kept the old boyfriend statue all the way through our dating, engagement, and wedding and I am only getting rid of it now. Now in my defense, that wasn't a choice I made, it was simply that it sat on the top shelf of the book shelf and I NEVER even thought about it. It was just there...as proven by the dust so thick you had to use a chisel to chip it off. It was only because I was packing that I even took the time to think about the existence of the figurine and where it came from in the first place, making it of less value than the cost of the bubble wrap to secure it. So instead the conversation ends like this...

"Craig is having a hard time right now, he's likes the dolphins, will you just let him take it?"

That's right, I threw my friend under the bus. Thanks for taking the bullet, Craig.

Indecisive and crazy to be proven in the next post.

The Friends, the Packing, and the Football

I have found the perfect solution to packing dullness: be unable to say "no" to any of your friends when they want to drop by. Your living room becomes a wreck/disaster filled with people you enjoy drinking beer and helping you mock your own things. It makes it much easier to part with the random deck of cards you still have despite the fact you are pretty sure it is only three quarters full. You will inevitably find photos and papers to reminise over and they will keep you going when you would have long since given up.

Now I am on a bit of a schedule. While technically I have a month to pack, I am leaving for a week to go to a friend's wedding...well, I am in the wedding, and I would like to have a garage sale a week before we move. Thereby I have decided I have to pack at least one box a day between now and when I leave. Seems simple enough. First, I find my 1994 Acer laptop...yeah, that's right, I am cool, I had a laptop in 1994. It had a whopping 64MB of memory and 32 MB of RAM...and a FLOPPY drive! Why do I still have this? I don't know. Has it made it to the trash? Not yet.

The nice things about having friends is you start to hand out things that you don't really want to get rid of but if it goes to a home not far away it doesn't seem like you are getting rid of it. Win/win. So the dolphin statue has found a home and some books...and then Michael Vick ends up taken out of the game and cheering errupts. Ben shows up with food and we drink some beer....and it becomes increasingly easier to throw away files and papers and anything that I just don't feel like packing.

As if the computer was not enough to mock, then you find multiple rolls of undeveloped film. That's right, film. While I can't imagine I ever took any photos I would be terribly embarrassed by the thought of developing questionable film...what's on it? Who's on it? When's it from? When's the last time I used a FILM camera? I must admit I am curious and terrified all in the same breath.