How not to Pack, A Cautionary Tale: Part 3, The Teeth of the Storm

[Picking up from the previous episode.... The movers arrive on Friday instead of Monday, so we're facing a real packing disaster - a mess-up of the first order.]

After taking out the plastic scream to lend a bit of levity to a desperate situation, I call Matt, on business in France, to ask whether the moving company made a mistake. "Can we send the packers packing?" I plead. He is astonished, and says he will call back.

Shock drives any ability to speak Spanish from my head. I can't understand much of what the foreman says, though I'm happy to catch my favorite Spanish phrase, “Tranquila, tranquila."

I grab a few things out of the storage room and set the men to work there with a modicum of confidence that we will not regret losing access to whatever disappears.


Souls being weighed, to judge their worthiness for heaven.
Catalan National Museum, Barcelona, 12th century

Matt calls back to say the movers needed to come today instead of Monday because we have so much stuff. He agreed to this change months before, but had forgotten all about it.

I find that I'm actually delighted with this blooper of his. It must be the three years living in Catholic Spain that makes me delight in the thought that I am now doing penance for my sins of procrastination. This ordeal frees me from doing the inventory and from the guilt of not doing it. Wonderful!



Iris, packing her desk. Finally!

On the other hand, I'm not feeling so good about having such an absurd amount of stuff. The foreman expresses his astonishment at the quantity that must be packed and calls for reinforcements. I don't even have time to think about adding gluttony to my list of sins.  The rest of the day is a frenzy, trying to keep ahead of the four men who are rapidly packing our unsorted, uninventoried possessions into boxes.

Everything we don't want packed gets thrown in the bedroom

Uh-oh, I see one of them in my studio. I can’t think of even the most rudimentary phrases. "Iris, tell him to get out of there! Ask him if he packed anything."

"Adele, tape shut the front hall closet so they don’t pack the things for Scotland. Throw this pile of clothes on my bed, and tape shut the door."

"No, don’t tape it, I have to go in there!"

By 6:00, when they quit, I look a bit like that plastic scream doll.
Working on my purse with silver paints is a lovely restorative.

Saturday morning 5:00 am: I can’t sleep, thinking about all that needs to be done. I keep imagining my friend, Bernadette, who, with great poise, carries out their family moves single-handedly. What would she be doing now? She probably would travel to the coast to join her children, who are already relaxing at a beach resort. She will return by herself on Monday to oversee the move with her neatly printed inventory on a clipboard. She is thinking to herself that she must remind her husband, who is on a business trip, to join them at the resort. He may have forgotten they are moving.

Adopting my most Bernadette-like attitude, I decide that I can at least let Matt sleep a couple more hours.

Later, I sort through the wreckage of stuff thrown in the bedroom the day before, and consider how I can do in two days all the things that I ought to have done over the past two months.  What can I assign the kids to do, without causing a rebellion?

Matt says we seem to be keeping up pretty well, so he figures he'll go on one of his three hour bike rides. I think to myself, he’s crazy. He has no idea that we are on the verge of disaster. But I encourage him to go. Why stress him out as well, when I don’t even know what to tell him to do?

After the ride, bless his sainted soul, he spends hours dismantling my studio.

On Sunday we move to a temporary apartment five blocks away, further complicating the madness. We lose the keys, and the hot water is not working. We have to move food and kitchen supplies over, and surely there is far too much stuff to take to Scotland.

Repacking bags that have been mixed up.

Monday is only slightly less chaotic, and yet closer to the end, so more dire than Friday. We must search for those keys that got packed by mistake. I have to repack the items that have been mixed up between our normal luggage and air shipment, and unpack a portfolio with art work of Claire’s that she wants shipped to the school in Paris that she will be at next year.

 

Does Claire really need this sent to France?

I have to wonder - am I just blogging about what is happening, or is my blogging affecting what is happening? With all this unpacking and repacking, we are really doing the most extraordinary job of not packing .  

 

 

 

 

 

I find Matt in the kitchen sorting dozens of jars of herbs and spices. I say with a note of panic, "Why are you doing that? They can just pack all that up."

"No," he says, "Any food items will hold up the shipment in customs. We have to take them with us to Scotland."

"What, all those jars? Then throw them out!" I say. I'm beginning to crack.

It must be his determination to not share my panic, or his disgust that we have already thrown out and given away so much in the chaos, but he devotes himself to emptying all the little jars and putting the contents in carefully marked bags.  I decide to not argue. After all, he should be on a business trip, or relaxing with the children at the seaside resort.

 

 

Yikes! I wasn’t paying attention and they are putting bubble wrap around the suitcases meant for our trip to Scotland. I decide I must get them over to the other apartment. Where have the girls gone? They must be hiding out there so we don’t ask them to do anything, but how can I blame them? They should be at that fictional resort on the coast. 

 Matt asks me to take as well the bag he has put together of the herbs and spices so it gets to Scotland. It must weigh 10 pounds. It occurs to me that I may have to remove some art supplies to fit them in. I want to stick them in the back hall for the portero, but in the interest of preserving peace in the marriage I put them all in a canvas bag and balance it on top of a suitcase.

 Like so many moments in life, there is an apt Moomintroll cartoon:

5 blocks later, now at the door to the apartment building, Matt calls. He just found a note about an orthodontist appointment for Adele in one hour. Argh! What more can go wrong?!  Well, no one answers the bell. I have no keys and I can't make a call because I have run out of time on my cell phone. I don't know how to get to the office, and the GPS has been packed, so, between one thing and another, Adele misses her last appointment with the orthodontist.

Locked out of the temporary apartment with two suitcases 10 pounds of spices, I discover that
my phone is out of money and, therefore, time.

The Munch Screamer Doll has disappeared, no doubt into a box, but its spirit lingers over us.

Stay tuned for How Not to Pack: A Cautionary Tale
 Part 4: False Endings