Ready As I'll Ever Be

The air freight left yesterday afternoon, and is slowly en route to our place in Washington, D.C. Turns out we got screwed out of about 1/3 of our total weight allowance, because the shippers didn't know what they were doing. Bummer - but I got everything that I felt I needed.

The sea shipment gets packed up tomorrow, and this will be a different kind of stress. My weight limit is 18,000 pounds, which I will come nowhere near meeting. So I have no stress about leaving anything behind - that was the fear yesterday with the air freight. The stress tomorrow centers around control. Being a bit of a Control Freak, it drives me crazy that 12 men will swarm my little house tomorrow and pack things wherever they see fit. I've got things packed and washed and sorted, and sitting in very organized piles. The holiday decorations are in a pile. The toys are in a corner. The baby gear is in a clump. My stress level at this point lies primarily in wondering how much those 12 men will care about my little piles.

Because this move is very different from your typical change of house. In your typical change of house, everything piles into a van for a few days. Then you unload it all in the new house. You've got lots of boxes to unpack and damage to inspect, but you're back in control of your possessions again. Easy as that. That is not how this move will work.

When our shipment leaves our house tomorrow, it will move to the port of Shekou and sit there until it can clear customs. Once it has permission to leave China, it will move onto a boat piled high with other containers, and sit in the bay until that boat is full enough to sail. Then it'll make its way slowly across the world to a warehouse in Maryland. My things will sit inside their boxes, inside their crates, inside that warehouse, inside of Maryland until we leave the United States. Once we pack up to go to the next post, wherever that may be, we will give the all clear for each of our boxes to leave Maryland, hop back through U.S. customs and head off on another boat toward another country. Probably about 2 months after we arrive in our new home, the stuff that currently surrounds me will arrive.

Here's where it gets tricky.

Should my container fall off of the boat, should that warehouse catch on fire, or should a few of my boxes be grabbed by pirates en route to that next post (all entirely possible), I need to be able to make an insurance claim. I'll need to be able to tell someone exactly what I lost, and how much money they should give me for it. More than that - I'll really want to document what was lost with a well completed packing list. The packing list serves as proof of what I own.

So tomorrow, my mother and Annika and I may frantically tail 12 men as they pack things into random boxes, doing our best to label them accurately. I do have a complete inventory of our household items (bet very few of my readers can say that!), but I still feel the need for that documentation on the packing list.

This is what's keeping me awake right now. Once it all leaves my house tomorrow night, I expect to crash, and hope to sleep for a long time.