We're 100% 'go' now. It's getting pretty frantic around the soon to be old homestead. Today, Drake achieved his meltdown, and I achieved my Lenten sacrifice.
We decided we needed to finalize our storage unit. Now, Drake has spent hours planning how our storage unit will be loaded, and stacked in the unit we rent. To get a four bedroom household (minus a 5x10 cargo trailer of stuff) into a 10x20 foot storage unit takes a lot of planning, and plenty of erasures on a graph paper plan. And not just any two dimensional plan - but a 3 dimensional representation of where everything will be placed/stacked/tubbed and handled. However, after much work, and then more work, and then even more work as I changed my mind about what I was going to store/not store (Yes, he patiently changed his plan every time I changed my mind.), he finally had the perfect plan until today when we went to see the storage unit we will be renting.
The first unpleasant realization was that a 10x20 storage unit is not necessarily 10x20. The one we're renting is 19.6 x 9.9 as well as 18.10 along the other long wall because there's this fir down piece that cuts out along one of the short walls. AND if that wasn't enough, the door was totally in the wrong place. Drake assumed a long narrow space with the roll up door on the short wall. Oh, no, the door is offset on one of the long walls. On the plus side - the space is very secure, very clean and the managers actually live on-site. Plus, there's trailer storage space for when we're in town.
Melt down time. As we got back into the car after checking out the specific unit and measuring it, the first words out of his mouth were: "This is not going to work. I don't know what we are going to do. This is a disaster." Why is it we always jump to the negative conclusion. We wring our hands and assume that when our carefully laid plans blow up in smoke that they can't be replaced with something as workable. I think it must be human nature. 50,000 years ago, somebody probably had a melt down when the fire went out. (We have Quest for Fire recorded - and those meltdowns are regular occurrences in this movie. Of course, some of those situations were literally life and death.)
However, I didn't think it would go over too well if I suggested our storage unit problem wasn't life/death.) That's where the Lenten thing comes in - I actually held onto my temper. My Lenten sacrifice this year is to keep my temper in check. I won't say it was easy, and I won't say that I didn't come close to letting off a little steam, but overall I was pretty pleased with my effort. Unfortunately, now Drake knows what I'm trying to do over the next 37 days, and he's not above trying to aggravate me. I did see boxing gloves at the exercise studio this morning......... As long as I smile when I hit him, I should be OK.
The closer we get to the actual physical move, I'm realizing that there's still more STUFF that I'm going to be letting go. And, even better, I don't think I'm going to miss it. I've also realized that if I stay out on the road vagabonding for five years then all my stored stuff will seem like new when I recover it. Now, there's something to look forward to.
And, not to keep you in suspense, Drake has managed to revamp the storage plan, and he's confident the storage space is going to 'work'. Like I ever doubted it.
