Crossing the Rubicon

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A clear day.

Pack out. It is part time capsule, and part  'this is your life'. It's a weird thing, and I don't think you ever get used to it. Mainly because our default response (when sedentary) is to just keep all these things you accumulate. The things we keep settle like layers of sediment around us, in our living environment. We don't address this accumulated stuff- and if we do, we put off for another day.

 When you enter the FSLife, you can no longer do that. You have a finite amount of total weight, split between your storage, your HHE, and your UAB. Every pound counts.  Keep or toss. Store or send onward. Nothing escapes review. When they came to do the pre-packout survey, they told us we were either at, or over our maximum*. Two weekends ago we were sifting through the last bits of junk before the packers arrived. Bye bye old Christmas tree, toddler bed, crib, clothes, and all manner of junk we haven't used or looked at for the last two years. Or longer. Last week, our house was full of boxes. Today, the house is empty save for our suitcases and a pile of stuff set aside for UAB.

 Since we have a moving scale, we've weighed out our UAB items and they are also well under the total weight for UAB. Which is good because I still have a few souvenirs to pick up before we leave Sarajevo that are not going in a suitcase because they are too damn heavy.

* Our total weight for HHE, it turns out, was under the maximum. Which means we can get some HHE stuff sent from Florida to Mexico because we have the weight to do so. 

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