The Second Wave

Since we don’t foresee any problems with the sale (we close in less than one week!), Kenny and I were at our house last weekend, packing all of our possessions into boxes and bags. After a short debate, we decided to rent a climate-controlled storage unit in NOLA rather than stash our stuff all over the city at our friends’ and relatives’ houses.

I am way okay with that decision. The unit is very reasonably priced, and having everything in one central location will make moving it all into our new house much easier, when we do find a house. So we packed and loaded and packed and loaded, both my car and his car and also his dad’s trailer, and brought the second wave of our things to NOLA last Sunday afternoon.

We seriously looked like the Clampetts. All we needed was Riley-bean strapped into his carseat on top of the pile and the picture would have been complete.

However, we did not have Riley with us. Thanks to Nola, who watched the boy for four days and three nights, I was able to go up a day earlier than Kenny, and I got SO much done before he even arrived at the house. I focused mostly on the kitchen, but I was able to tackle various other places as well. I had many walls lined up with boxes, fully packed and ready to be taken away. I took all of our wall art/pictures down and corralled them into one place, and I did the same with our lamps. I purged a small pile of things we never used. And I completely emptied one bathroom, two storage closets, and Riley’s whole room.

   

I actually packed too much too early: Kenny has this thing about saving almost every single box he puts his hands on. But most of those boxes were still up in the attic, strategically (and somewhat precariously) arranged. He had gotten down a decent pile the last time he was at the house, and I did have to venture up there once myself for more. When he was able to get ALL of the boxes down on Saturday morning, we discovered many for things that I had already packed. Oh well!

After working very hard, we felt we deserved a break. A reward for our (necessary) efforts, if you will. So we took full advantage of being sans kid and went out to dinner at one of our favorite places in the city. We decided that no matter what we would stop working at 6pm on Saturday, take showers, get dressed, and go out for a nice meal.

Okay, so we actually didn’t cease operations until almost 7, but we did go out and we did have a really nice dinner. And we were taken care of by Mike, the same fabulous waiter we had the last time we ate at this place, which was sometime in my third trimester of pregnancy. He actually remembered us, and when we told him we were there for one last dinner before we moved, he gave us dessert on the house.

Mike, I may miss you most of all. The whole meal was absolutely delicious, but those fried churros with the chocolate dipping sauce were phenomenal.

(And thank you again for the straw; as I’m sure you could tell, I did not let any of that precious sauce go to waste.)

So to wrap up, we have one more weekend of moving and then we’ll be out for good. And our house does not look like our house anymore. It doesn’t even feel like our house anymore. With many of our things no longer visible in their proper places, it’s starting to feel like just any house. And I’m glad for that. That lets me know that when we do find another house in NOLA, I can fill it with all of our things and it will become our house. Our home.

But I’ll always, ALWAYS love our first.