Only 2,000 boxes to go

Move update: Today we dealt with about 50 boxes. That leaves only 200 or so go. The kitchen is looking good, mostly because I recused myself from having anything to do with it. My office, if you can call it that, resembles some of those photographs posted after the Joplin tornado. If someone were to take a picture of me going through the detritus, I’d have the same dazed look as the survivors, but none of the pathos.

I always brag to the brunette that I’m a ruthlessly efficient man, not given to sentimentality or hesitation. Uh, right. If that were true, none of this stuff would be here now. I’d have tossed it before leaving Wichita. Fact is, I’m a procrastinating sap like everybody else. When it was time to make a decision, I just shrugged and let the packers waste more paper and boxes, and the fuel to get it here.

Still, it’s not like I can’t get rid of anything. Today I tossed a handheld Magellan GPS, with manual, that was quaint about 10 minutes after I bought it and is today, in the era of the smart phone, just laughable. I dumped some Windows 98 manuals and reinstallation discs for Word Perfect. I got rid of some primitive computer games and some homemade mix CDs that now seem a bit too heavy on ZZ Top. I’m still trying to decide on the Rolodex, and the garish beer stein, and the cheap clock I got for putting in 13 years at the Missoulian.

They say a cross-country move is about the same as a house fire in the way it thins out one’s possessions. That’s not entirely true in my case. All this stuff I’m going through I haven’t seen in months, sometimes years. If it had all burned up one night I might be none the wiser and none the sadder. But now it’s here, and sometimes getting rid of these things, all freighted with minor memories, seems like choking a puppy.