M.I.A. ...and then some!

We have been in a P.O.M. (Prisoner of Moving) camp for the last four months, and oh how I wish we had indeed still been in St. Lucia, drinking our blue drinks, as so many of you humourously commented in mails to me--might I point out here that You were the only ones laughing... :-|  

T & I have crawled through the trenches of preparing for a move, discovered that six years of living in that apartment, and my world-renowned skill for packing inordinate amounts of things into one suitcase apparently spilled over into our 117 sq.meter apartment...shelves people, they can triple your space!!...all translated into lots and lots of stuff.  I even sold furniture and appliances prior to the move!! 

We painfully discovered all these extra things we didn't know we had so much of when we packed them ourselves for four days, with an unmovable deadline hanging over our heads, with a grand total of (and I DO NOT exaggerate here) four'ish hours of sleep, mostly taken by T who was turning green with fatigue.  I am supernaturally able to turn into some kind of robot-like human--too bad this only happens in times of sheer stressful terror.  One night he thought I had gone AWOL from Camp Packalot because I never made it to bed for the 'nap' and he couldn't find me in the battlefied...until he happened into the master bath, called my name and I popped up from my 15 minute snooze in the bathtub in a state of freakish awareness....cold porcelain can be very calming I must say.

In the end, one day of movers turned into two--a team of four men turned into six--and one medium sized truck and 3 containers turned into a grand camion (big truck) and 5 containers...and I believe I may truly, have, for the first time in their moving careers, actually surprised a professional crew of movers at how much stuff two little people, a small dog & bird can actually pack into an apartment! 

I could tell you many horrid stories those four days unfolded, but it ended with me & Freya walking through the only home she has ever known, realizing all of 'home' was gone, as home is where we all are together, us handing over the key to the legal officer who did our checkout, dragging one god-awful final load to the car, driving down to the studio, treading zombie like up to the apartment.....and collapsing onto the bed for a 14-hour nap until the next day.  Never has sleep been so blissfully warranted, desired or appreciated.

War teaches you something--any war--and that is that the soldiers around you better be someone you can count on no matter what.  T & I seem to fall into these hideous situations and always come out a team.  That statue you see in the picture was from an anniversary--already I can't remember exactly which one--it's from Norway, pewter with Norwegian stone carving the two out of one.  I know it struck a cord for me b/c we'll always be those college sweethearts--me with my ponytail, T holding my hand...in the middle of all the moving mess, a constant.