happy girl! A mighty weight off her shoulders! It was almost hard to process such a big relief, plus the satisfaction of having done well, all at once. There wasn't too much time to wallow in it, however, because the pods would be delivered the following morning. A (very) late dinner and a few phone calls, were all the celebrating we had time for. The pod guy came, but, yikes!, some other pod person had forgotten to get the necessary permits to leave them in the street. All he left was a referral to a moving company. Over the course of the next hour, or so, Rachel got busy to work out a deal over the phone with the (naughty) pod company and a moving company. So, now, there would be movers coming Thursday morning to pack up a truck in the usual way. They, then, would transfer her stuff to the pods (the pods are accessible storage units, kept at a warehouse, to be delivered, someday, to wherever she'll decide to settle next). We liked the idea of not having to haul everything down the stairs, ourselves, so the deal was lookin' better for us. The sofa disassembly/reassembly was rescheduled. All we had to do was pack.And pack, we did. We'd picked up packing materials at Home Depot on Monday (random guess
as to how many boxes, etc.), so over the next two days, she packed the two suitcases for her wide-ranging travels and we got almost everything else put into boxes for storage, except the furniture, of course. Turns out, we had the exact number of boxes we needed. Amazing! And, to my great joy, my luggage finally caught up with me at about midnight Tuesday. The movers came, as promised, Thursday morning and loaded up the truck. The sofa came back, as promised, all put back together, ready to be loaded, courtesy of Mike and George. Mike and George, brothers, are the furniture world's version of "Click and Clack--the Car Guys". Very Boston! Very entertaining! By the time the movers left, all we had was about 1 1/2 hours left before I needed to return the car and shuttle to the airport. In that amount of time we were able to: take care of the trash, drop off the cable box, deliver a large load to the Salvation Army, get gas (where I discovered I had left my credit card at the restaurant Monday eve.) and get Rachel back to her neighborhood, where we said a quick goodbye. After that, I also had time to miss the correct turns to the airport three times before finally getting it right. Boston is charming, but they should start all
over with the roads.It felt good to have gotten everything accomplished! The trip home was uneventful, except, perhaps, for the 5/8 Native American physics professor in the seat next to me, who talked to me for 4 of the 5 hours to Salt Lake City about his theory of eyesight improvement, the Vikings, naturopathic medicine, nutrinos, visible blue light beams, and so on. Fascinating. Rachel's now on her way to Hawaii and a vagabond existence, for awhile. Tom and I will meet up with both kids in Germany in a month to see how it's all going. We're looking forward to that, of course! --Sandy
