Mulling over options

What would you do?

1) Stick with the movers who gave the high quote, and just try to forget about the money.

2) Go with movers who gave us a more reasonable quote (but still higher than we were hoping for)

3) Do the truck rental thing, and see if people who asked if they can "help" are up for it on May 31. (By the way, we had some strapping young lads visited our door to share their religious beliefs with us recently. We mentioned that we were moving, and they asked if we needed help. It only occurs to me now how NICE I think that was. Too bad they didn't leave a number.......... )

4) Force the cats to just suck it up and move the furniture and appliances for us. All this free room and board has got to have some limit....

Sub-quiz: The stove we bought but no longer need : a) bring it and store it at the new place, you never know when you'll need it again
b) craig's list it-- someone will appreciate a nearly new stove

I need a lot of direction in my life, don't I?

scratch that

Yikes. The estimate the movers gave us was quite a bit too high, even with all the work we're doing ourselves.

It's time to call in a few favors, I guess? ARGH!!!! We're now back to looking at rental trucks...

packing

I've met a few people in my life who actually claim to enjoy this process . . . but most people will agree that it is quite difficult. It's not so much the actual labor that goes into it, which takes a lot of time and patience, but for me it's tough to see how much stuff I've let myself accumulate. It's even worse to know that in this move I'm not reducing quite as much as I should be. The number of books in this house is positively alarming.

Since we're both planning to teach college english, it's not too hard to imagine why we have so many books horded on our shelves. But why must we have 4 copies of somewhat obscure books, like Melville's Typee? I have notes in mine, he has notes in his, one has a cool cover, and the other it part of the NorthWest Newberry editions. All must be kept, of course. Multiply this by hundreds and you'll start to see the scope of our dilemma. Anne Fadiman has a wonderful essay on this in Ex Libris. I can't be quite so erudite as she, but I can tell you it's one mell of a hess around here.

Odd that I should like UNpacking so much more... perhaps I can slim down our book collection on the other end of this process.

The movers come tomorrow to give us an estimate. We're hoping that if we move enough of the little stuff ourselves our final bill will be less upsetting.