T-4: Packing is Hard and other things to remember…

T-4. In four short days (!!!) we will leave this fabulous country that we absolutely love. First, though, visiting family here in Atlanta.  We arrived blurry eyed and completely exhausted.  Exhausted!  Is there an exhaustion scale? Super. Duper. Exhausted.  All that packing and planning and storing and selling and cleaning and organizing…uffda.

We follow many travel blogs and read practically every travel memoir we could find.  They all seem to include some sort of sentence that goes like this, “…so we sold/gave/stored all our belongings and went around the world…”  *Poof* just like that….there’s nothing to it!

Well isn’t that a bit of an understatement?

I wish I could tell you in excruciating detail what getting ready is really like, but a day later it is already a lot less bad than it was 2 or 3 days ago.  It was hard!  HARD!!  Poor Aaron said, “Where do we start?” with quiet desperation in his voice.  I am just thinking, “Give it all away!” which is not Aaron’s style.   Aaron sees the value in everything we own…in a depression era kinda way.  To his credit, he can fix anything and can save money like no one’s business.  I like these traits a lot, but I’m also just ready to heave every last thing out of our 790 s.f. abode into a truck for Goodwill.  When I’m honest with myself, I know he’s right.  *sigh*  So, piece by piece we decided what to keep, what to sell, what to give away.  To be sure 95% falls into the first two categories.  Here’s how it all came together:

The whole experience wasn’t the worst thing in the world – no one was on their death bed, so let’s not be overly dramatic, but I also know it was a lot harder than “we sold all our stuff and bought backpacks” would leave you to believe.  We knew better.  We’ve both traveled before…we knew, but we forgot.

Sooo, I use my best project manager skills and set a schedule.  Each evening I update a long (loooooong) spreadsheet of our accomplishments.  But still so much to go. Every night we felt like we did SO MUCH and every night it felt like the list was twice as long as when we started the day.  Aaron and I both love a list…and never ending lists it was.  We are so (SO) grateful for the many friends who offered to help.   We put them all to work.   Those good people, the best friends on the planet, packed our kitchen, our books, our clothes and for me…my jewelry (that took one person all day I’m not ashamed to say).  We canceled the paper, got a credit card with no international fees, purchased the gear and returned and purchased and returned and purchased…(that’s another blog altogether), we told everyone, we gave notice at work, we identified a property manager and wrote a contract, we cleaned the gutters, in one 24 hour period we sold our bed, our sofa, our car and moved out of our house.  The one night we had no bed, Aaron slept on the couch and I slept on the hardwood floors and was no worse for wear.

With that…in an appropriately zombie kind of state, we showed up to SeaTac airport on the morning of Halloween to eagerly board our flight to Atlanta.

THIS IS IT!!

Suddenly we’re living out of our backbacks.  Just like that – the move is over.  Just like that – our trip is in the “soft start” my in-laws promised!  Just like that – we were welcomed into loving arms and given a big old dinner and glass of wine.  At the equivalent of 5:00pm Seattle time at least one of us was already headed to bed and the other wasn’t far behind.

In a week or two we can write one simple sentence, “…so we put all our stuff into storage and headed out for a trip of a lifetime” but for now we are just plum tuckered out.  This week we will enjoy our family, run some last minute errands, make some last state-side phone calls and hopefully by Thursday be roaring to go!  With packing a distant memory…practically forgotten… we will head out, out on our Big Trip.  We can’t wait!