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Less than three days until the movers show up and I am starting to panic.

Kevin and I moved to Virginia almost 10 years ago, with the idea of staying for four years and then high-tailing it back to Az where we belonged. We had all of these plans to visit NY, Niagara Falls, see the changing leaves in NE, Boston, Philly, the beaches of the southeast, Disney World, see the fireworks in downtown DC. It was basically going to be an extended working vacation. But then we found out about Max (yay!) and my ability to actually do things was turned upside down. We also found that we LOVED it here and couldn’t stand the thought of going back to hot, brown, dirt-y Az permanently. Virginia has trees and green and water and grass and SNOW and flowers and Fall and summer and it was all so great. What’s not to love?\
(Ha. The first week we were here, there were two stories about dead newborns found in dumpsters and the local NBC station broke into an episode of Friends for a breaking news report that the Redskins had acquired Brad Johnson. I turned to Kevin and asked, “What the hell kind of place did you move me to?”)\
Here we are almost 10 years later, moving to Savannah, which has trees and green and water and flowers and summer and the BEACH. I am excited about the move. The kids will have a backyard to play in. Kevin will have a great, challenging job. I will be only 15 minutes from the beach. But I am sad to leave Virginia. No more Babba (Kevin’s mom) just down the street. No more snow to play in. No more Wegman’s. No more AOL school for Brian. No more 5 minute commute for Kevin. I won’t get to see and enjoy my wonderful house all fixed up.\
Less than a week to go. I’m happy, sad, excited, nervous, stressed, and busy.

I am cleaning out Max’s schoolwork basket from this year and found another gem I had to share. The assignment was to choose from that week’s focus words and create sentences. This is what he wrote. I am underlining the focus words.\
1. A chick grows down on it’s skin.\
2. Black is not a color.\
3. I once fell out of bed.\
4. My freedom is not going to be given away.\
5. I’m going down a road to my choice, I fell of that road last week onto a black trampoline.\
Another assignment was about perseverance. They had to write a goal and then four steps it would take to reach that goal. Max’s goal? “To get out of Daisy’s club and join the Mutu team.” HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. His steps are equally hilarious, but that is for another day.

I am really busy! Will talk more later.\
PS- Happy birthday, Dad. Love you!!

Kevin just twittered this: Getting scared of @jclawver’s to-do list for me tomorrow…\
Ha! Which, he should be afraid because tomorrow is the only work day I have from this week.

The internet has been super cranky and unreliable, so no real updates. Sorry. (That’s aimed at my folks, mostly.) It’s also been a pain for Kevin, who hasn’t gotten out of the habit of working 24/7. 🙂 When the internet connection does work, you should see Kevin and me jump into action. It’s pretty funny.\
And for some reason, my long distance isn’t working, which is a super pain too.\
Blarg.

There’s this guy, Dave, who started the 100 Thing Challenge, which seems right up my alley since I love getting rid of stuff! My friend who pointed the article out to me said that this guy is kind of cheating a bit because things of personal value are going into a box for a year and aren’t subject to the challenge.\
I started making a list to see what I could easily purge. Surprisingly, 100 items aren’t that many! If I could get rid of something without disrupting Kevin or the boys then it would be considered mine [ie, clothes, dvds, books, bed pillows (I have three- that is 3% of my alloted total, oh noes!)]. Shared items such as kitchenware, linens, books and dvds we all like are off limits. I also decided not to count consumables like shampoo. So, here is my list:

• Books- Pride and Prejudice, Mammoth Hunters, the scriptures, the current two books I am reading. I like to read books, I just don’t like to keep them around. Thankfully, the Harry Potter books fall under the shared category.
• Multiple seasons of a TV show on DVDs will only count as one item. I think I only have three must-haves. Bet you can guess what they are. 🙂
• I can easily get rid of my CDs thanks to iTunes.
• I have about 12 items from my childhood and pre-Kevin days I want to keep- yearbooks, doll bank, stuffed animals, Madam X print, my mom’s miniature collection. I have tried to get rid of the mom’s collection twice before but each time I got sad. Since they aren’t taking up a lot of room (they are miniatures, after all), I kept them. If we get a real laundry room in the new house, I am going to display a few in there. That makes me happy in my brain.
• A handful of electronics- alarm clock, iPod, laptop, cell phone, camera.
• My jewelry items will count as one item since everything fits in the jewelry box.
• I have four purses and one fun beach bag that I can’t bear to part with but when packing up my closet, I got rid of five other purses.
• I can reasonably limit my shoes to seven pairs, but I don’t want to feel deprived. I may decide to just count each shoe rack as one item, instead of individual pairs of shoes.
• Three coats- rain coat, heavy coat, light coat
• Sorting out actual clothes is daunting. I did go through them when I was packing, and got rid of a lot of stuff already, so let’s count that as a win, ok? You can tell a man came up with this 100 plan because a woman’s foundation garments, slips, and stockings alone would probably eat up half of the list.\
  So, how many items is that total? Did you remember to count my three bed pillows?\
  Since I am moving and dealing with all of that, this project will probably fall by the wayside. But I am totally on board with leaving a bunch of stuff boxed up in our future garage, which will still make my life and closets less cluttered, so yay.

Skip the family photos (yes, we know, they have a lot of kids) and check out the Duggars’ house. They have a cafeteria-style serving line and an indoor slide. Neat!

So, where was I? … Oh yes, the Red Cross says that my blood is special and extra-needed and I feel extra motivated to donate more. THEY SHOULD TELL THIS TO EVERYONE. They don’t even need to lie, “Your blood, Ms. Jones, tested positive for virus chryosomethingoranother. We need your blood to treat patients with serious injuries and illnesses.” See? No lying or truth-fudging.\
In other news, the carpet guys are still here. Kevin is upstairs putting furniture back where it belongs, reassembling one of the kids’ beds even though it is not his responsibility. This means he will be too tired to help me with the “real” to do list later tonight. The good news is that the upstairs carpet looks nice. It’s just light brown. The bad news is the carpet in the basement makes my eyes cross. It’s two-toned berber and is just busy-looking. Oops. The carpet guys also didn’t do one area completely and then work on the second area- they did them simultaneously- which means that my plan of working on the basement when they moved to work upstairs was totally shot. Oh well. More for me to do later.\
Brian’s got the pukey-sickness again. Ugh.\
I am about 2.5 seconds away from exploding from the stress.\
ETA- I just canceled the painters, which is a huge load off. I just couldn’t keep up, moving things from place to place in the wake of/in prep for the various goings on here. Phew. I’mma gonna rest for a bit.

Kevin didn’t realize I was being serious about him not having a place to sleep tonight. Teehee. Oh, wait, I mean OOPS.