On Sunday night we took our station wagon and trailer over to her rental house to load up all her stuff so I could take her to the airport the next morning. Her husband had left the day before to drive their jam-packed car up to Seattle where it will be loaded onto a barge and shipped north. When we got there she had almost everything packed; stroller and bike were disassembled in enormous boxes, ski equipment in a long bag, various pieces of luggage. The trailer we currently have is on loan to us from my dad. It isn't the ideal trailer for loading up luggage since the side boards are only about 12" high. But we made it work. (Dave and I love working together to pack and tie down odd-shaped cargo. I think that's one of the reasons we've never hired movers or gotten help loading our own possessions. On our weekly Home Depot trips we enjoy the challenge of getting all our odd-shaped project purchases into the trailer safely and securely.)
Since they were only taking the essentials back with them, Mari let me rummage through all their leftovers: power cords, camping cookware, Rubbermaid storage boxes, Christmas lights, canning jars, collapsible compost bin (yeah baby), etc. I love thrift stores, garage sales, and the like so I was happy to take these things off her hands. =o)
She and Dave worked on applying some wood stain to the front door before we left where one of her dogs had scratched. While they did that, I hung out with Alex. He's just over 4 months old now and is at that age where it's all he can do to prevent himself from grinning to death. He gets so worked up with his intense smiles that he just overwhelms himself. It is so cute! (He's also at the age when his mouth is like a leaky faucet; I was soaked with drool by the time we left.)
Isn't Alex such a cutie? Look at how much he's grown since my "Happy New Year" post (I'm holding him in front of the tree).
The next morning I was at her house just after sunrise to take her to the airport. Lucky for us, the airport was pretty empty and we were able to park right across from the entrance. Unlucky for us, the trailer tail lights weren't working so we had to be careful not to get a ticket. Mari was sure to alert me when she saw a sheriff ("Julie! Don't hit the breaks until he can't see the back of your car!").
There was no way the two of us could take everything in one load into the airport. She had to make like 5 trips back and forth from the check-in booth to the car. I stayed at the car and untied all the stuff in the trailer, and tended to Alex. The airport folks were surprisingly nice about the whole thing, considering that airports these days are generally very skeptical of random luggage being left around. They let her stash everything by the door until she got it all in there. People were definitely starting at us as we tried with all our might to man-handle those enormous boxes onto the dinky luggage cart: two petite girls wrestling all this cargo and obviously in a hurry. (We arrived only an hour and a half before her flight...and that was before she got it all hauled inside, inspected, negotiated the extra baggage fees, and got the dog loaded, inspected, and paid for.
Oh, right...did I mention that we also had Mari's 80 pound dog, Animal, with us, and his GIANT shipping crate?
Things could have gone really wrong at the airport, but they didn't and I'm glad. It'll be great when Mari, Matt, Alex, and their dogs return in January.
1 comment:
hahah i wish you had that on video
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