I feel so much lighter today.  Like, about 1,000 pounds lighter.

The shipping company picked up our things yesterday.  As I described in an earlier post, we were weighing the boxes on the bathroom scale as we went along, so I was a little surprised when the movers’ final total came in at 1,088 pounds.  “Is there anything you want to add? We can wait a few minutes,” they said.

This is what 1,088 pounds of stuff looks like.

So I wandered around the house, opening drawers and looking in closets.  All I could come up with was a journal with a only a few pages written in it.  It was the diary I had on my first long distance relocation adventure, in 1981 when I bought a one-way ticket on the Green Tortoise from San Francisco to New York City.  My journaling pledge only lasted as long as the bus ride: the challenges and excitement of being in a new place soon took precedence over recording it all for the reading  enjoyment of my future self.

When I took my Green Tortoise journal off the shelf yesterday, I noticed for the first time that the cover is decorated with camels and what looks to me like Arabic script….  strangely prophetic?  I don’t know.  Anyway, it’s coming with me.  Maybe I’ll write in it if my blog gets shut down.

But I couldn’t find much else I wanted to bring.  I had already made up my mind that everything not already in a box was staying home.  I did toss in one more item at the very end: the bathroom scale.