Packing

Ugh.  I hate packing.  It's the one thing I remember, distinctly, doing a happy dance about when we bought our house in Oregon - I wouldn't need to pack and move every year!  We were settled!

Ha.

The luggage truck gets packed tomorrow.  That means the luggage that's going on the luggage truck needs to be packed already.  SHOULD have been packed days ago.  Guess what isn't done?

I would say, screw it, we'll put it on the plane or in the car.  BUT, with Dylan driving that means he won't be with Kaylee and I at the airport.  So, to get from the apartment to the airport to the hotel, even with the Cirque-supplied shuttle, I need to be able to maneuver the baby, the car seat, the stroller, the checked and the carry-on luggage.  Yes... I can look helpless, or even directly ask for help, and I'm sure that other members of the troupe will be helpful, but that's not my style.  Since I was little, I remember having the idea instilled in me that if I can't carry it myself, I packed too much.  Now, the image in my head that goes with that philosophy is me walking into my grandparents' home for a weekend with them, not me moving myself and my child to a whole new place to live for 8 weeks.  But it's hard to erase sometime so deeply ingrained.  So, I want to have just one or two checked bags.  I'd like to think I could live on that little for a week, until the luggage truck catches up.

I can't just put all the spare stuff into the car, because the car already has Dylan's suitcase and carry-on, and two boxes of stuff that will dropped off in our storage unit (since it's a five minute detour off I-5) plus whatever of what's still laying around that he won't get packed between now and tomorrow when he leaves for work. And it's just a tiny Insight.  Yes, we did drive it cross-country, in December, and return with several boxes of things from my grandmother's last year... but it's still not huge.

So, I stress.  I feel like I have all my extraneous stuff and all the baby's packed and ready for the truck.  But I know that when I go to pack the two suitcases I'll check and the carry-on, I'll discover I've still got too much stuff.  I don't know where it's hiding now, since I'm sure I've cleaned out most of the closets and drawers, and what's left SHOULD fit... but somehow, it will appear.  And there will be a lot of it.  Stupid stuff.