In a nutshell, packing was a nightmare. Nothing went according to plan. Some things turned out better because of it. Mostly, packing was just thoroughly traumatizing.

We were supposed to pack our stuff, move it to our storage space in Santa Cruz, and be done with it. I figured packing would be pretty quick, since there didn't seem to be that much stuff to do. I was wrong. Quite wrong. The first sign was that we ran out of boxes. The next sign was that late friday night came. We begrudgingly looked at what was left to do, though we had packed up the Scotland essentials, and slept over at our friend Emma's place.

It's simply amazing to realize how much stuff we had accumulated. since the bare minimum living essentials had been packed up and ready to ship off to Scotland, it didn't seem like there could be that much left. However, box after box just kept piling up. Saturday morning arrives, the Big Moving Day. We were supposed to rent a van, make a couple quick trips to our 10 by 10 foot storage space, and be done with it. The "real" movers were supposed to show up, cart our Scotland bound items away, and leave us to our own devices.

We knew we only had the rental van from 9am until 5pm, so we hopped down to the rental place as soon as they said they would be open. When we got there, not only didn't we see the van we had been told was there, but they also weren't open. Starting to panic, the best we could do was go back home, and deal with the movers.

We return to find the movers have shown up right on schedule, ahead of us. We pointed them at the pile of boxes to be shipped, and made some last minute impromptu boxes with loose ends also being shipped. This took care of everything except the bicycles. The evening before, we had tried to put my bicycle in one of the boxes, but the box just wasn't quite wide enough. It had been getting dark, and it just didn't happen. So now under time pressure from the waiting movers, we pushed and shoved and manipulated the bikes until they finally wound up in the boxes. After the trauma of my bike, Kristin's bike was a snap. A box of experience, plus a slightly wider box did the trick. We handed these boxes off to the movers, and they went on their way. Whew. At least we'd be set when we arrived in Scotland. But now, we had a disaster in Los Gatos, already in progress.

After the movers left, we realized we weren't going to finish the move, certainly not if we had to also drive all of our stuff down to the storage space. It was taking long enough to fill all the boxes, and if we to drive them 30 minutes away, we would kill ourselves. And anyway, we didn't have the rental van. So, after crawling into the corner in a literally crying panic, we made a decision. We weren't moving out. Or more exactly, we were moving all the stuff into the garage. We knew we needed to move out of the apartment, but thought we'd be able to take advantage of the landlord's good graces (Thanks Ben & Dora!), and we were right. If we had known earlier than two days before moving out that the company would pay for local storage/moving of all our stuff, we wouldn't have had a problem at all. So, here began the process of filling the garage with all our remaining stuff.

We remembered to call our landlords, and let them know what was up. And packed. And rearranged boxes. And started cleaning. Mostly, I packed, and Kristin cleaned. This went on all afternoon. Somewhere along the way, we needed to move some of Kristin's plants to my parents' house, so we called them, and left a message. In the meantime, we kept on packing things up. We remembered (barely) to stop and eat dinner, and kept on going. Around 9 or 10, we got a call back from my dad who asked if we needed any help, and we said sure. His coming over was like a godsend. With his help, we got massive quantities of boxes and furniture moved from the apartment down to the garage. He was there until at least 1am, when he went on home, and we went over to Emma's to spend the night. Our sleeping bags had already been shipped to Scotland, so we couldn't sleep in the apartment...

After a much too short night, we returned for more trauma. Two amazing things happened on Sunday. My dad helped again, and we had the easiest apartment moving-out walkthrough of all time.

We packed and packed, and a couple hours before we were done, our landlord came by to show the apartment to some prospective tenants. After walking them through, and talking with them outside for a while, Dora came back upstairs, handed us our deposit back, and took off. No official walkthrough, and we weren't even done packing yet. I think Dora was an angel in disguise, that day. Finally, we finished packing up all the stuff, and it was all moved into the garage. Only then did we fully realize how much stuff we actually had. The entire garage was full. Ok. so it was only a single car garage, but it's a lot more stuff than the storage space we had rented. If we tried to move it all ourselves, we would have failed anyway.

We locked up the garage, dropped our plants off at my parents' place, and were done. Finally.

I never want to move that much stuff again by myself, ever. I don't think I could take it. As it was, there were many times during the weekend when I was ready to just lock up and leave our stuff for the next tenants. I was almost surprised I didn't do that.

Out of the apartment, but into the garage. We just had to drop a key off with Merav, my saviour at work, who would magically make the entire garage wind up moved and stored for us.