There is one thing I have to clarify right off the bat.
This is not a picture of David and I. We are hotter than this couple and much more stylish. If you passed us on the street you would definitely be more interested in taking us out for coffee than these guys. The other way you can tell that it is not David and I featured in this photo is the fact that when David and I pack, we do not smile at each other. We grimace. We scowl. We bitch and yell. Ok, I bitch and he yells. We are not one bit happy, like these bozos.
It’s really all my fault. I can be low-key about a lot of things but packing is not one of them. When it comes to packing I have rather severe control issues. In fact, the last time we moved, when I was six months pregnant, I literally packed the entire house, every dish, ever book, every article of clothing, despite my terrific girth. This is because David has such a haphazard packing style (at least compared with mine) and watching him pile books up in unaligned, precarious towers -- a bunch of dime novels on the bottom, a Riverside Shakespeare on top of that and a bunch of board books on top of that – was so deeply unsettling to me that I fired him from all packing duties in perpetuity.
Whenever we take a vacation, David knows to simply select the items he would like to take with us, and place them near, but NEVER inside the suitcase.
It is awful of me to be so controlling, I know, and even worse to resent him because being so controlling means I end up doing a mind-blowing amount of manual labor, but the truth is, I am a master packer. Master. I learned this art from my father who can fit the entire contents of a studio apartment in the trunk of a Subaru Outback, with enough clearance for the driver to safely navigate the FDR. I am freakishly talented at maximizing storage space. Like, that’s one of my great talents in life. For instance, if I left it up to David he would commit the number one biggest mistake when packing a suitcase which is to put clothes in folded. A more TERRIFIC waste of space I cannot begin to imagine! Lay the clothes flat and you can pack in twice as many. I mean, this is beginner stuff here.
So here we are, a few days away from our moving date, maybe 10% of the way packed. I have been preparing myself to hand over some of the packing duties to David because, despite what I may have led you to believe, I am actually only human. It won’t be easy. It will probably give me a bleeding ulcer. I may end up shoving him into a large box and sealing it closed with super-strength packing tape. Or maybe I’ll drink a few glasses of wine to settle my nerves and pass out with bubble wrap in my hand. Who knows how it will all turn out.
One thing I can tell you for sure. We won’t look like these guys.
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