We have officially reached the point of no return. The point where 80% of my life is in boxes and bubble wrap. I no longer feel the nostalgia of a house once loved and lived-in, and I honestly just want to get the hell out of this half-packed mess.

Backing up, I’ve obviously starting packing. Bit by bit, I started filling boxes. The more I packed, the more I realized that this was going to be much more than a move, but also a massive clean out of all our CRAP. I don’t know where it all came from! Basically, if it came from our house on Meier, and hasn’t been used or touched since, goodbye.

I am taking no prisoners. Three huge laundry baskets taken to Plato’s Closet (Only $40? Are you serious??) and then donated to homeless families. An entire carload of boxes taken to Goodwill. Scratched and ugly furniture sitting outside our house waiting for trash night (which is still three days away – the neighbors love us!). I am determined to only move things that we want and use this time. But somehow it still seems like we have a ridiculous amount of stuff for only two people. The dogs only have one box of items, so I really can’t lump them into the blame…

We have rented a 26-foot moving truck. Casey thinks it will be an embarassingly excessive amount of space, but I’ve been eying the gigantic stack of boxes taking over our living and dining rooms, and I’m not so convinced. I keep having nightmares that it won’t all fit, and I’ll be forced to make Survivor-style eliminations on who gets to come, and who gets sent to Exile Island (aka the front curb).

I even took pictures of the moving mess so I could show you on the blog just how out of control my house is. And then I packed my camera charger and cords. Whoops.

I have four more days of work, and I’m also having to clean out my large office (that I’ve “lived in” for five years), as well as five years of downloaded music, photos, and personal files to my work computer. Casey keeps reminding me that I “never should have done that in the first place” but really, who is that helping now? I think this is officially called overload.

With all that said…

Casey and I sat on our front porch (the only space not covered in newspaper and various piles) at 7am this morning, eating a nutritious breakfast of Kashi cereal (the only food in the house) out of paper bows (the kitchen is packed), and he looked at me and said, “I know it’s crazy right now, but are you excited? Because I am. I am really, really excited.”

And it made me so happy. Because I am too. I am really, really excited. Every box I pack, I think about un-packing in my new kitchen, or new living room. I keep talking to the dogs and telling them all about their new huge yard, and told them that if they are good for me on the drive down, I might let them get in the hot tub at the new house.

I am tired. I am hungry. I am tired of eating weird pantry food. I am talking to my dogs too often to be considered acceptable.

I’m won’t go into details on the blog (because even bloggers deserve some semblance of privacy), but I had a bit of a family scare this weekend, that also made me really really value the people in my life. Boxes will get moved, I won’t die from a week of eating cereal, and even if it takes 20 hours to drive the dogs to North Carolina, we will get there.

Five more days. Five days of goodbye lunches and dinners, cramming time with friends and family in as much as possible, taking walks with the dogs around my favorite neighborhood loops, eating at my favorite restaurants. And a little bit more packing…