Bad Packing & Good Friends

Upon returning from the conference, it was back to other kinds of business in the ATL, where I relished the thing known as an afternoon thunderstorm (they're not so plentiful in Rome this summer). 

And I relished other things, like ethnic and local cuisine.

Yes, there are Chinese, Japanese and Indian restaurants in Rome.  But their number is quite limited. Americans need to not take for granted how ubiquitous the cuisine of assorted 'others' is, at home. 

I'd already sold the car, so I'm still waiting for this mysterious payment.

Nirvana. I can get tots at the Navy commissary here, but they're not going to come with this beautiful burger, blue cheese spread and those gorgeous pickles.  Some Americans living abroad say that the first thing they go for upon their return home is Mexican food.  I did that too, but this meal pictured above may really have my heart. I may or may not have committed a mean act when I sent The Spouse this picture. 

This is the portion of the program in which I have to give a huge shout-out to friends, without whom I wouldn't have accomplished so many things in so little (and in such a crazy-busy) time, both before I actually moved and even after. 

Thanks to the efforts of a singular friend - who I won't name unless she writes to tell me that she wants to be named in this blog - I successfully sold and/or gave away a lot of belongings.  This is, so I'm told, what you have to do when you pack up and move out of the country:  look at every thing you own and determine whether it should a) be stored, b) move with you or c) go away (to trash, to charity, etc). The decision-making alone is fraught with a lot of stress, particularly if you are an artist/academician with a lot of art supplies, books and things that are neither of the former type but are somehow vital to one or both enterprises.  

This process can suck up a lot of time.  Hoping to be mindfully intentional, even when dealing with the third category (go away), more decisions pile up in an overwhelming manner.  Who - or what - gets what? Does this recycle or go into a landfill? Would someone benefit from having a particular item?  How much stuff can I cram into a car to take to a charity drop-off location, and where did I put that tax receipt? 

And don't get me started on how difficult it is to wrangle pick-ups from charitable institutions.  They are so overwhelmed with other people's stuff that they cannot schedule your pick-up for tomorrow.  Or the next day after that.  They might be able to get to you in a week or two.  And even when they agree to schedule that pick-up with you, they might bypass you on that day because they collected too much stuff from preceding clients.  That happened to me, three days before I HAD to be out of an apartment.  And the things that were slated for that pick-up were far too large to put in my car.  

But thanks to that friend - who has other good friends - and a new friend, I made that deadline.  I hope that a certain young music teacher is using those aforementioned items in good health.  

 

I sold my car.  And I didn't buy another one. 

And speaking of my car.  My car!  My third Subaru.  Those who know me well know that I won't drive any other kind of vehicle, in large part after having an accident with a drunk driver who totaled Subaru #2 and left me with one broken bone.  I was able to walk out of a car that had endured a front-end collision at 65mph.  Thus, I bought another one.  I enjoyed driving it for 11 years.

And - thanks again to that friend who knows how to network and spared the time for it, as well as the friendly innkeepers where I stayed - I just sold it.  It's gone to a young woman in the city who, according to her parents, is 'finding her way.'  

For those of you who are wondering whether we'll have a car at all:  we will.  A Prius Compact is on a boat somewhere.  We'll see it in August. (And getting it officially IN the city with all of its proper stickers and whatnot, plus where it will be parked vs. where we're living...that's a future blog post.  Trust me.)

I let go of a lot of belongings over the course of several months as I was preparing for this move. I might have felt a twinge or two over a couple of items (like that flat file...how I will miss my flat file), but handing over the car keys and walking away with only a license plate was the toughest one.  I think that this may have been one of my most 'American' moments in awhile:  to shed a few tears over a car.  Ridiculous? Maybe. To have wheels is to have freedom to go anywhere in a country that, save for a few urban centers or regions, has lousy mass transit.  That 'Scoobie-doo' - as one friendly mechanic called it - saw me through an F1 tornado and resulting baseball-sized hail.  It helped me through three household moves.  It carried hundreds of pumpkins for Academy students to carve during the 8 Halloweens I was their art teacher.  It hauled me and some girlfriends to a favorite island beach getaway multiple times.  It bolstered my rep as a bleeding-heart-liberal-overeducated-middle-class-culture-fiend.  (Tell me that you've seen any other kind of driver behind the wheel of a Subaru...I dare you). 

It never let me down.  A lot of other people, organizations and institutions have let me down.  But that car never, ever did. 

A recent letdown came in the form of unpacking a few things we were allowed to airfreight to ourselves.  But first, the absurdity.  

The Spouse gets a call at the appointed hour.  
He goes out of the apartment to meet the delivery personnel and our boxes.  
I wait in the apartment.  
Time passes.  
More time passes.  
Then, a knock at the front door.   
Visible through the peephole: two large cardboard boxes, two heavily panting, sweating Italian men, and someone I’ve never seen before:  20-something, slim, bespectacled.  
And he says, ‘Hi, I’m (insert The Spouse’s name here).’

??

Surprise! There is another American tenant in our building…who has the same first name as The Spouse.  He lives above us. Our boxes went up two floors too far, initially.  Our portieri are limited with regard to both English, and apparently, keeping track of who lives where.  

And because Italy wouldn't be Italy without bureaucracy, I had to sign in 7 different places on three different forms before those poor breathless men could leave.

And by that point, The Spouse arrived.  
Also breathless. 
"I found the truck, but I couldn't find anyone with it."

**************************

It felt a little like Christmas (the items were boxed in mid-June), especially when I withdrew tongs and a good knife set from the box.  

But the packing of the boxes, generally speaking, was deplorable.  It was performed by ‘professional packers.’

I didn't just take these photos of the recently opened box for the blog.  I'll be submitting a complaint eventually. It makes perfect sense to throw a box of books on top of many other smaller, more fragile items, doesn't it? Realize that this whole container is about 42 inches tall.  There is a ton of things underneath that heavy box.
And see below what they elected to wrap in copious amounts of paper.  

So, let's double or triple wrap things that require no protection, but also toss whole, thick cookbooks in - in a random fashion, so that their spines will be warped. 

Yeah.

Plastic containers deserve a small forest of paper? 

I have to ask:  what happened to basic packing skills?

Grocery shopping challenges here could fill several blog posts, but one difference that I happen to like is the fact that you bag your own groceries.  Yes, I scramble to count out unfamiliar bills and coins while simultaneously bagging my own items (in my own bags, too, because otherwise shoppers pay for plastic bags), but when I get home, my spinach hasn’t been crushed by a heavy glass jar because I used common sense when I put the items in the bag.  Back in the States, I have progressively witnessed an overall decline in bag-packing-skills in paid baggers.  On more than one occasion, I have had to stop -after purchasing and having items bagged but before I left the grocery store – to re-bag most of the items I then felt I could safely place in my car. 

Europeans would say that we're spoiled by even having baggers at all, until they unpacked their spinach.  

A young man who worked in ‘my’ pharmacy in Georgia once mentioned how a local, independent grocery store in town used to stage bagging competitions among the kids who worked there.  Speed, space management and weight distribution skills were prized.  Winners received a small scholarship for college. I'm not sure that they they do this anymore.  

Does anyone get actual training in packing a bag anymore? 

When did it become necessary to train people how to pack a bag in the first place? 

I like the idea of placing value on vocational skills while simultaneously encouraging the acquisition of more intellectual skills, too.  The world isn’t an either/or proposition, really. So when did we decide to prepare people for life only one way or another?

And can someone prepare me for the arrival of the bulk of our belongings in mid-August...bundled up by the same 'professional' packers?  

No, this snarly beastie isn't in Rome - he's in the Asian Art museum in San Francisco.  But he expresses my feelings about bad packing...

To close: a song that I always thought was beautiful, but now has even greater meaning (pardon the video, made by a fan and not the short-lived band).