Mel HEARTS Packing! So Fun!

The Burnetts are not dead — they are just in Florida.  Such was the title of a blog post Mel made over a year ago before they crossed the Atlantic, and the same is true now.  For the Burnetts, Florida doesn’t represent beaches or vacation or Disney; it represents working their butts off.

Packing up a boat is so much easier than packing up a house.  I mean, everything in a boat has already been carefully selected, weighed, and put in a stackable box, right?  In no way are boat people holding on to 23 halfway-corroded iPhone charging cables, 5 European travel adaptors, 15 extra cans of tomato paste, and about 10 pounds of winter clothes the kids have grown out of.  When someone packs up a boat, they should rejoice in how much money they saved perfectly provisioning so that they never have to drop off 6 boxes at the food pantry consisting of cans of corn with $7.99 price stickers affixed.  They should rejoice in the fact that they have no foreign bills to exchange at Wells Fargo, knowing full well ahead of time that Wells Fargo won’t buy Bahamas money.  I mean, returning boat people will not waste anything.  They will not throw Jamaican coins and about 5 pounds of half-used office supplies in the trash, they will not donate 8 half-drunk cheap liquor bottles to the Leopard dealership, and they will not be caught dead buying Space Bags so that their worn-out beach towels will compress down to handkerchief-size so that they will fit in their family Truckster.  Most definitely, there will be no heated debates about the future utility of Magma stackable cookware or full-body wetsuits in their new life, and there will be no disappointed sighs when they realize that getting a storage Pod and shipping it across the country is not worth preserving their half-corroded and bulky possessions.

You see, boat people rejoice in offloading stuff.  It’s…fun.  That’s why we have to do this every few years.  Such a thing is especially satisfying for those moving out of a Leopard 48, THE BLACK HOLE OF BOATS.

Okay, Mel can only pump out the sarcasm for so long.  Whew.  That’s all for today, folks.

In between the back-lurching, joint-fatiguing, demoralizing packing moments, the Burnetts have spent their time continuing to be culture-shocked.  They are amazed how Americans are able to maintain any control at all of their weight, as they have had huge portions of hyper-flavorful food served to them at every restaurant they have visited, where they are embarrassed to eat as if they have been force-fed a diet of gruel and water for two years.  They love the Bahamas, but chopped up sea snail just doesn’t cut it.  Of course, Mel suffered GI distress last night after her first round of pizza in six months.  Probably should just stick to salad, with 10 DIFFERENT SALAD DRESSINGS to choose from!

The Burnetts have rented out an Air B&B, which they are stuffing with boat crap.  The Air B&B comes with a TV, and Mel has been glued to HGTV for about 18 hours now, fascinated to see people rip out entire walls of their domiciles (ON PURPOSE, PEOPLE) and discover something called carpenter ants.  At one point she entered the kitchen, reflexively concerned by a “new swishing water noise”, only to discover that it came from the dishwasher.  The kids are in heaven.  A dishwasher!  The Burnetts have also re-discovered the joys of a huge refrigerator with a built-in ice dispenser.  The family now lines up to use it.  We have never been so well hydrated! 

Mel is exhausted, so time to go to sleep in this giganto thing called a king-sized bed. Greg is already there, after supervising the boat detailers today and touching up Marvin.  Just barely enough energy to upload some pics over the satellite Wi-Fi here.  It goes through a satellite.  So high tech.  So high tech.

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