PCS Status: Getting Started

Happy Mother's Day, you guys!  I'm just sitting here with a mimosa trying to enjoy my last few moments of peace before things start to get stressful because.... PCS'ing has officially commenced!  This is the week that we start the process of moving to Texas!  This is the week that all of the craziness begins and things get so insane that we all just close our eyes and hope that our things make it to Texas.

Hold on a sec.... I need to refill my mimosa.


Eric is busy working on his final project and will turn it in later this week, and then he'll be free to start clearing Fort Lee.  Which is good timing because that's when the movers come to pack up our things.  
We took our car into the shop and got the oil changed and the recalls fixed that were sorely overdue since we were living in a foreign country and never had the energy to attempt to translate car problems into German.  But now, our car is ready to drive across the country with three humans, three animals, and a lot of luggage!  
I've been running all of our animals to the vet in preparation for them having to be boarded for our last few days here in Virginia, and again while we are at home visiting family.  Our babies needed check-ups and vaccinations, but Brew has special needs so we are always at the vet with him anyway.  I'm really going to miss their doctor, I think if we were staying in Virginia a little while longer, we would have become best friends.  
I'm sort of starting my kind of organizing where I take everything down, touch it, clean it, and count it before making perfectly organized piles for the movers, but I've been stalled for most of last week because there was a significant leak in our dining room and we've had contractors in and out of our house for 3 full days fixing everything.  Which, by the way, they still are not finished with, so I would be so grateful if y'all would please say a little prayer that they'll get done by the time the movers come so that we can move on with our lives already.  

But Eric and I have managed to go through every single closet in our house!  We purged as much as we could at the beginning of every month for the last 3 months trying to condense an out of control situation hidden behind each closet door.  It was almost like one of those game shows where you pick a door and get a prize; we never knew what we would find so it was all new to us again.  I was sure that we were going to find a brand new car behind the closet door at the top of our stairs, but I'm disappointed to say that we did not.  
Such a bummer.  
The Army only allows us so much weight when we PCS, and we added a good amount of weight when we purchased our living room furniture and washer & dryer, so we wanted to be sure to get rid of all of the truly non-essential things we have carried around for far too long.  It's difficult to know though, what exactly to get rid of and what to keep when we don't have a home in El Paso yet, so we can't be sure if we really could use something or if we'll have room for it or not, but even after 3 big purges, we still have plenty of crap to fill up a couple of houses if we really wanted to.  It's truly ridiculous.
Right now I am dragging my feet on taking my curtains down.  Curtains are the things I love most in a house, they make me feel cozy and private, and make my house feel like a home.  But if I want them to be washed and packed together I've gotta get going on that.  Even though I am ecstatic to be leaving this stupid house, taking down the curtains means that the movers will be here soon and then we're back to living out of a suitcase, and after a really long time of not being "settled," I am aching to put some roots down for a bit and not live out of another suitcase.

And speaking of curtains and houses, that's probably the biggest thing causing me anxiety right now.  Eric and I have decided to live off-post this time around.  We have been living in military housing for 7 years now and feel like living in a house that is not attached to another family is going to help us feel more "settled," and we haven't felt settled for a really long time.  We have been browsing Zillow like professional stalkers for a couple of months now, we know the area of town that we want to live in, and because of our stalking skills we feel like we could make our way around the city blindfolded.  But we are in contact with a realtor who is helping us to find a long term rental and he suggests not signing any lease for a house sight-unseen, and we completely agree.  So until we get to El Paso there really isn't much we can do, which means that the movers don't have an address to deliver our stuff to, which means that our things may get sent to storage and could get stuck there for a little while until there are movers available to deliver and unload all of our things.

Gulp...mmmm....mimosa....


But I can't worry about that.  I am confident that we will find the perfect house once we get to Texas!  Little pieces of life's puzzle always fall into place the way they're supposed, no matter how much you worry about them.  So for now, I'm going to focus on my last few hours of peace by watching one of my favorite movies (Fried Green Tomatoes) while Eric works on his project and Isabelle does whatever it is that teenagers do when they're mom wants peace and quiet.

So Happy Mother's Day, y'all!  I hope your mimosa's are as sweet & bubbly as you are!