It came! A moving truck carrying four crates of things that were packed and sent from our apartment in Egypt pulled up around 5pm yesterday.
We had all been looking forward to this day for months, but an event that started out feeling like Christmas quickly turned into, “Hi-ho! Hi-ho! It’s off to work we go!” And not all cheery like the dwarfs in the movie. Nope, we started out with Doc, two Happys, a Sneezy and a Sleepy, but ended up with a whole crew of Grumpys.
Ugh. So much crap. Of course we need it, since it’s necessary things like sheets, towels, and dishes that up until now we have been borrowing from the embassy. But still. Ugh.
In general the boys were a huge help. As soon as the crates came in the front door and the movers snipped the metal bands, they were tearing into them. It was the perfect excuse to pull out all the sharp knives and cut away at the packing tape. And then the stuff bomb exploded in my house and I started hearing cries of “moving is hard!” when the wadded up paper threatened to take over the living room. And everything was grimy. After sitting in our apartment in Egypt for 3 months collecting Egyptian dust and dirt, and then being boxed up and sitting in crates in 100 degree heat for a month, everything felt gritty and smelled like old boxes from an attic. I may have thrown a teeny-tiny fit when I came in after sorting 10 loads of laundry and still had a mountain to go and found everyone sitting in the living room, in a state of mid-unpacking, having stopped to play with the various toys they had uncovered. But by that time it was 8:30 at night and time for a McDonald’s run to salvage the evening.
Once the crates were empty, the boys carried them outside. They were cardboard sides with a reinforced wood and metal bottom, so they didn’t break down easily. Before bringing them outside, they practiced stage diving into the piles of paper.
This, my friends, is why you don’t pack candles. I purposely did not include this in our things to be shipped, but the packers must have done a quick sweep of the house and boxed it up. Thankfully it only melted on one of my laundry baskets and all over some of my cleaning rags. If this candle had puked on Josh’s uniforms or our bedding, it would have been ugly.
The candle is totally sticking its tongue out at me like it’s auditioning for a part in a KISS cover band.
