Parade of belongings

I’m sitting at home on my deadline day, checking off numbers as movers offload a truck the size of Summerville with 129 pieces of our life.

Some of this stuff I haven’t seen in two and a half years.

Hello, cello! Come here, let me tune you up.

There goes the red-lidded bin that I moved all my worldly possessions home from France in. That was 10 years ago, and everything I owned that was worth moving between continents fit in two 4-cubic ft containers.

What is that strange, lumpy package? Oh, it’s two baby gates, a shoe rack and a poster tube, of course.

The table! To the kitchen, please. I can’t wait to sit at a matching dining set again.

That’s my canoe strapped to the side of the truck. Let me take that, I’ll just put it in the back yard along by the fence. This weekend we are going to take the kids paddling. It will be Caroline’s first time in a canoe! Sylvia was only months old the first time I had her out.

Pots and pans in the kitchen, please.

The bed goes upstairs, to the spare room. (Hear that? A spare room! We can have guests now!)

There’s the bench Nan bought Travis and I for Christmas one year. It can go by the back door; I’ll fill it up with hats and sunscreen and sandals later, some day when I am not on deadline.

All that’s left now is the couch. It’s made many moves already, first with my aunt on multiple military postings, and now three with me, two of them inter-provincial.

Ok that’s it, got to sign the paperwork and get back t the office. This has been fun!

 

Tomayto Tomahto

I didn’t figure out that not everyone could read music until I was in my twenties.

Apparently it has taken until my thirties to figure the same about triathlons.

The idea of going for a swim, bike and a run with Sharpie-inked numbers marked up and down my arms and calves is not foreign to me. Though I’ve been woefully nonathletic for several years now, I’ve registered for a triathlon which takes place in six weeks. It’s only a sprint distance, so it’s really no big deal, but people go nutso when they hear about it.

I must remember that a triathlon to some is like Scuba diving to me.

That is, no way no how.

Give me a tri any day over underwater pressure and compressed air. Now THAT’s my kind of terrifying.