micheleandtom.com

Zoe had her peanut allergy food challenge today. (This is the last test, where they feed you peanuts and see if you have a horrible allergic reaction, to determine if you still have the food allergy in question.)

The doctor began by dipping a peanut in water and having Zoe drink the water.

Slowly, over the course of four hours, she worked up to a half a cup of peanuts. She was fine, loved the taste, and had nary a reaction.

Actually, “fine” is probably an understatement. She was deliriously happy. She came home and ate some Peanut M&Ms and then wanted to eat at an Asian restaurant for dinner (which we previously had to avoid because of their ubiquitous use of nuts).

She was so excited, she asked Tom and I to be her “nut buddies!” We hope Zelda grows out of her nut allergies as well.

Step 1: Move out of apartment.  Check.

Step 2: Clean apartment.  Check.

Step 3: Lock myself out of the apartment on the last night cleaning while Tom is unloading stuff at our storage space. Make sure that I am only wearing socks, no shoes, and that I don’t have a cell phone on me.  Check.

Step 4: Get really dry hands. (You know, the kind where the skin on your fingertips starts peeling up in tiny increments, catching on fabric all of the time.  The kind where it feels like you have a thousand tiny cuts on your hands when you use lotion.)  Check.

Step 5: Become so exhausted that you can’t remember where you are driving pretty much every time you get in the car. Check.

Step 6: Buy more luggage. Slated for Today.

Step 7: Sort through the huge pile of crap that is sitting in my parents’ loft to determine the final packing list of items that we will take. It has got to fit in 8 bags (that’s two per person, unless Delta changes their free baggage policy on international flights in the next few days.) Slated for Today and Tomorrow.

Step 8: Try to eat something fresh and green that does not have sugar. May Not Happen!

I’m afraid that my period of “we can fit everything in a 10X15 storage space” righteousness may be over.

Tom and I were coming down to the wire today and we knuckled. We couldn’t handle the truth…or at least, the stress that it might not all fit. So, we reserved a small storage space directly across from our current 10X15 unit, just in case.

Current thinking, (at 1:12 a.m. on Monday night/morning) is that we will use the add-on storage to just get it all out of the condo without worrying about stuffing it all in the 10X15. Then, at his leisure (in the next 9 days), Tom will see if he can artfully stuff the 10X15. If it all fits, we’ll just pay a minimal fee for the add-on space and ditch it.

Never a dull moment.

By the way, we are deliriously happy that we scheduled this nine day break between when we move out of the condo and when we actually leave for Argentina. As Tom said, if we were flying out in a day or two, these would be dark times indeed.

Fight Gone Bad is a CrossFit workout designed for mixed-martial artists. Word is that it was named this after an MMA fighter completed it and said, “It felt like a fight gone bad!”

Tom did this workout on Saturday morning, perhaps not the best lead in to a weekend of intensive moving.

After the last two days, I believe Tom feels as if he is living “Move Gone Bad.” (Did I mention that he’s my hero?)

Moving limbo is finally getting to the girls.

The house is nearly empty and the only thing they can do is watch TV. Tom and I have no time for them and are constantly crabby. They have two days of school left.

IT IS REAL. Poor things. We had a long talk tonight about how tough it is to move, and to live “in-between,” as we are now. But I promised it would get better, and indeed, told them it would provide good fodder for future family stories. “Remember when we ran off to Argentina…”

“What do you mean?” Zoe asked me. I gave her lots of examples of crappy times in the Reeves family that have become classic family stories. (Dumping canoes, camping on rocks, driving the wrong way down a one-way street after Mom’s thyroid surgery.) She seemed to take some comfort in that!

Zelda, the child who loves drama of any sort, can’t wait to talk more about being in limbo, and suggested we all discuss it on the way to school tomorrow morning because we would all be together in the car!

One of the side effects of doing your own packing (which I try to avoid as much as possible) is that you grow to hate all of your shit. As more time passes, and more packing has been completed, the less I want to keep anything.

At one point today, I waved a hand around encompassing the downstairs and said, “send it all to Goodwill, I don’t care anymore.”

As Tom says, the life of an international vagabond is not conducive to owning crap.

We have a 10X15 storage space rented and it has all got to fit. It’s going to be close, but Tom thinks we can do it. Perhaps that should be a goal–don’t keep more than you can store in a 10X15 room.

Suspicious people would think that I encouraged Tom to pursue CrossFit over the last year so that he could become my studly personal mover! (Moi?)

Truly, he has been a rock star during this move and I feel horrible (really, I do) that I haven’t been able to help as much as I would like because of my knee. Normally I am the insane whirling dirvish of moving energy, but this time around, it’s all Tom.

So, I would like to go on the record with my supreme appreciation of my dearest husband (who gets a break from my nagging to post here due to heavy lifting extra credit)!

Tom and I are digging the look of the condo right now!

We have art on the walls, carpets on the floor, and a few choice pieces of furniture here and there. (Most of the clutter has been given away.) We are really coming to enjoy this spare open look. (We call this living like an architect. Our favorite example is the Seattle architects that had one chair in the corner of a room with a black floor. Black floor? How cool is that?)

The girls enjoy it for sliding on the floor, wrestling, and strange games involving throwing soft balls long distances. So, there is a downside.

We continue to make progress on getting the apartment ready to hand off. (We leave a nice apt.) We had the pros clean the carpets upstairs and had window cleaners come shine up the atrium windows and the outside of the windows near the grill (they got a bit greasy, since Tom likes to get a good char going).

We inch ever closer!

Aaaack.

We have to get EVERYTHING out of the upstairs tonight so that the carpet cleaners can come and do their thing in the morning.

The biggest part of that will be dismantling the bed–that’s right, it’s mattress-on-the-floor time. Then, in the morning, we’ll just slide it on into the bathroom. *Sigh* I do miss the way we usually move–live normally until the day before the move, when the professionals would come and pack up our house.

With the amount that we are liquidating, we decided our normal moving strategy wasn’t really practical since getting rid of that much stuff requires waves of cleansing (for emotional reasons) that suck up a lot of time.

I sometimes feel that the basement (or the equivalent space wherever we are living) is where computers go to die–ALL computers.

There are many benefits to marrying your own system administrator: you never have to network your own computers again, you don’t have to figure out cascading style sheets, you will have responsible back up procedures in place, and you will never be forced to remove Dr. Pepper from your diet.

But, even with all of the good, some rain must fall. The rain, in this case, comes in the form of computer equipment (towers, screens, routers, Cat 5 cable, crimpers, wireless access points, etc.) stashed everywhere.

Tom has spent the last few days reviewing the graveyard and wiping drives and is now taking a long-needed trip to Free Geek to clear out the dead bodies!

Hallelujah!