“I am fascinated by the logistics of all of this.” That was a comment made by a patron of our garage sale a couple of weeks ago. Yes, well, what was fun and interesting to plan a little while ago is now painful and exhausting to execute. Greg and I have been drowning in “logistics.” That is more likely to kill us than hurricanes!
A week ago Greg flew back after a few weeks sweating in Florida while working on the boat, helped at the end by veteran sailors Bill and Steve. Greg was still in Florida when Mel announced that she made $1000 in her 2-day garage sale, assisted by the most awesome neighbors in the world. Greg’s response was, “Great! That will buy half of a spare toilet pump!” Sigh. Mel has never worked so hard to get rid of crap in her life!
Greg returned to a house filled with 30 piles of stuff, and yet somehow he managed to help pack while simultaneously talking on the phone with 5 different people in Florida, arranging for a haul-out of the boat to put in thru-hulls for our watermaker, among other things.
The words most prominent in Mel’s mind recently have been, “depreciation,” “boxes,” and “CRAP! SO MUCH CRAP!” The last few weeks have required about 300 yards of Gorilla tape (NOT the Duck brand HD Clear that Menards is so fond of — it SUCKS!), 50 cardboard boxes, 200 trash bags, 1 giant truck load to the dump, 1 giant truckload to Goodwill, 10 garage sale tables, 4 tarps, negotiations and preparations to sell the Prius, a meeting with the CarTime people to sell the Escape, a Craigslist posting of a fish for sale, U-Haul rental, a meeting with our realtor to list the house, a vet visit to get the cat prepared to visit up to 20 countries, eye doc visits to secure extra contact lenses, and a meeting with the auction house to arrange for auctioning the furniture after the house sells. We had our septic and well inspected, and we had the septic tank pumped for the first time in 5 years. Because apparently you aren’t totally free of all of your crap until you are literally free of ALL of your crap.
Yet today FINALLY we accomplished a major logistical feat: Getting (some) of the Burnetts the heck out of Minnesota!!! The U-Haul above contains a year’s worth of Amazon.com deliveries. Yes, it looks huge, but all of our possessions have been downsized to that mobile rectangular prism! Like a shrink-ray, but a lot more work! It is leaving about 5 days later than predicted, but it is leaving. Tommy, Greg, and Gypsy will make their way to Florida while Allie and Mel finish up the house. Last day in Minnesota for us is June 16!
We will miss you, Minnesota and dear Minnesota friends, but we won’t be missing all of that CRAP!
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