Mental Cartwheels

Well, yes, my brain is in overdrive, working on things like...

Is it cheaper to send stuff by moving truck, USPS, or airplane?
Checking maximum-size bag on airplane is nearly the same as the moving truck; second bag costs MUCH more; so we'll take six checked large bags, which is probably all we can handle along with four car seats anyway! USPS is much more expensive, even to send books at media rate. This involved dizzying calculations of cubic inches, cubic feet, linear feet, pounds and other measurements. Gevalt! I think I'll stick with recipe calculations after this.

How will we get from the airport to our new home?
One adult + 2 kids can drive a tiny car at the airport which we'll use to get to the grocery store until we find a van, hopefully all in that first week! One adult + 2 kids can take a taxi. That should work, especially since we have one much-beloved GPS and one of us would definitely get lost without it! (Only when we are together do we have a good sense of direction!) So no renting two tin cans and returning one to the airport the next day.

How will we do our laundry that last week after our stuff leaves?
Send the washer away (very attached to my oh-so-gentle front loader since I'm an oh-not-so-careful laundress... honestly inherited, I might add), have the landlady haul the other washer away, use the landlady's drier in Savannah, sell the one we have here, but use it until just before we leave so I can do laundry in the bathtub, and still be able to dry clothes! We have a frugal amount of clothing, so our clothes really only last a week, and every day that goes by is another load of laundry. I think exponents figure in here somehow.

How can there possibly be another load to go to Good Will?
I thought we'd decluttered three times already! At least! That load of paper recycling has been rather formidable too, and the recyclers never made it up that hill during the freak snowstorm, so who knows when they'll be back.

How can we pick a send-our-truck off date and get the highest odds of having our truck deliver our stuff the day after we get there?
Easy answer - pay an extra $1,000 for a guaranteed delivery date. Nah. We'll just stare at each other and twiddle our thumbs until our stuff arrives. And keep doing laundry in the bathtub. I did manage to work it out pretty closely. Leaves here on a Monday, has a good chance of showing up in Savannah the next Monday, but it might be Thursday. On the other hand, if we sent it off any earlier it would be ME packing the truck since Dean's last day isn't until Thursday at noon. So truck-packing will happen Friday day, Saturday night, all day Sunday, and Monday morning if needed. In fact, I think the kids and I may just clear out of here and leave DH to the friendly craigslist packers. Sorry, honey. :)

What on earth do you pack for meals to keep six people happy for 12+ hours of travel time?
The good news - food doesn't count towards your carry-on luggage. Bring on the protein bars. The kids will think it's a special occasion, and Eli will actually eat it. Still, it really irks me that the only kosher stuff you can really get on the road is drinks and chips. Even if kosher airplane food was really bad, at least I didn't have to pack it into a small space for six people. Without ice. I think peanut butter is okay now, though. Or not? I think we'll do turkey sandwiches - nice long-lasting protein.

Plane tickets? Easy!

House rental? Unbelievably easy, k'h, thanks to the incredible ML and to hashem, who definitely had a hand in that.

And, hashem, I really hope that that lovely blue ceramic bowl with all the lacy cutouts along the rim, that lovely, fragile, thin bowl, I really hope it survives the move. You can take any other bowl, just not that one.

And in the midst of all of this, I do feel calm (usually, dear husband!). Yes, there are flutterings, things to ponder and figure out, but all so terribly minor, and all to a good end. Yes, the next couple of months will be tricky and no doubt stressful at times. Yes, we will be saying farewell to many dear friends, and a house we have brought all of our children home to, and a Jewish community that has come such a long way in yiddishkeit over the last three years. We are grateful to hashem for a job that will be really good for DH, for affordable housing, for all that we already have, and for the new friends and community to come.

I feel like tomorrow I really should take the kids to the science museum or something. They've been so great despite my great distraction. We've been doing half-days of learning for now, mostly concentrating on reading and writing in Hebrew and English, plus math. Fortunately, for most things we're running about a month ahead of schedule anyway so no harm in putting it off for a bit, but I do want to keep up with the basics, and reading every day is really essential.

Time for bed! So I can do my children the favor of getting enough sleep!