Packing


At first I was going to take a picture of what my living room looks like and post it as the blog photo, but the truth is that things are such an incredible mess in my living room right now that I am quite frankly too ashamed to post that for the entire world to see. However, if you really want to see it, come on over. Just make sure you bring some tape and markers with you.

There's really nothing fun about this packing. Wait. Let me rephrase that. There's nothing fun about this sorting. I'm not actually doing the packing part. I'm only sorting our things into: Donate, Store in Singapore, Ship to US, Pack in suitcases to take to US. Everything else gets thrown away. Once it has all been sorted, I will mark the boxes and containers with colored tabs alerting the movers to know what to do with its contents.

In addition to all the items I'm sorting through at home, the hubz is bringing home his work (cuss word that means the same thing as "poop"), which consists mostly of heavy papers and books. I don't know what the heck I'm supposed to do with those things! I hope he's storing them in Singapore, and I hope when he gets home he puts them somewhere else besides where he currently has them!

What I want to know is, where did all this junk come from anyway? Did someone go shopping while I was asleep? I know when we left the US for Japan in 2007 that we only had two suitcases each. That's eight suitcases of stuff. Sure, we had a little more when we moved from Japan to Singapore, but I don't know how all this other stuff got here!

It's not really easy to decide what to keep and what to take home. I'd really like to take it all. But the truth is, I can't. I thought long and hard about a red vase I have. I didn't buy it. It's not all that expensive. It's easily replaceable. But then I thought about the story behind the vase - basically who gave it to me and why. It was my friend Patti. We were having a cook-out at the condos where we live and invited her to come. We had hosted several of these cook-outs, but she had just moved here from the US and it was the first one she came to. Patti showed up that Saturday afternoon with a big vase of fresh flowers! The flowers were just beautiful! When they died, I kept the vase. I was touched because of all the cookouts I'd had before, nobody had ever brought me a hostess gift of any kind, and these flowers were just absolutely beautiful! So there was a lot of meaning behind this vase when I settled on bringing it home with me.

Once I decided to keep the vase, I walked into the kitchen where The Girl was washing up a couple of things for me and I asked her to please wash the vase. Her mouth curled up and her forehead wrinkled a little as she said, "You're bringing that home?" I felt deflated. So I grabbed a garbage bag and dropped the vase in, covering it with a few other things that will not be going back to the US. I left the room, took a deep breath, then went back to the kitchen and told her she will not be going house-hunting with me when I get back to the US. At nearly 16-years-old, you'd think this child would know by now when the words coming out of her mouth sound judgmental. But she doesn't. I'm honestly worried for her when it comes to making new friends. Open mouth, insert foot. Speak before thinking. Those are the two things she does best. I know I do not have to explain myself to her, but the fact that she even thinks it's okay to question my choices makes me question where I went wrong as a parent.

So here I sit in the bedroom, laptop out, blogging. It was either that or yell at her. She came in the bedroom once to ask me if I was coming back out. I told her I'd be out when I wasn't so mad that I wanted to yell at her. The smartest thing she could have asked came next, "May I go out and find something to do?" I know that once I publish this blog I will be free to get the vase back out of the garbage bag without facing the judgment of a holier-than-Thou 15-year-old and put it in the box marked: Going Home.

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