Wife-beater t-shirt and greasy cigar are apparently optional. lol

So I have a tenant- praise God!! And it's a really nice family. I hope this all works out. We've signed the lease for the year and they are clear that I could come back at the end of it and they'd have to move. We'll see what happens. The deal is even sweeter because they are going to use a lot of my furniture so really the only furniture I need to move is my piano to my sister's house and my bed. Now for the really great thing... in exchange for lowering the rent a little bit, they offered to let me store all my stuff in the basement instead of having to take it to storage. That's huge!! Overall I'm spending less money since the amount I lowered the rent by is less than the cost of the storage - but more importantly, it probably saves me several days. And as I look at the calendar and see how few days there are left (9 1/2 weeks... ominous film reference) a few days is worth quite a bit.

Anyway, the calendar is filling quite rapidly and I'm starting to feel a little frantic. We crashed this weekend since it was the first weekend in months we didn't have a commitment. Ben and I both slept in AND had naps. I think next weekend shall be the garage sale. I am home Wed Thu and Fri to some cleaning, purging, packing and yard work (getting people in to help).

We'll be in Toronto Aug 10 - 13, Guelph Aug 14 - 17, Collingwood Aug 18 - 20, Niagara Falls Aug 20 - 23 and back to Ottawa just before we go -so the last 2 weeks are completely spoken for. The rest is filling up pretty quickly too...

Just thought I'd summarize the important dates for people so they don't have to search through all my ravings and maunderings to find out when we leave.

Last day at work (official) - August 14 but I have taken the whole week before it as vacation and intend on using much of my sick leave as well. I will need it for my mental health and probably for other people's phyiscal health so I don't kill someone!

Visit to S.W. Ontario to say good bye - July 17 - 19; and (approximately) August 15 - 23, maybe earlier depending on if we go on the XCIV annual canoe trip or not on Aug 7 - 9.

Benny's plans: school finishes June 25, trampoline camp June 29 - July 10, Gramma's place in Toronto July 11 to 18. And of course spending as much time with his "buds" Josh, Alessandro, and Aidan.

And the ever important Departure date: Tuesday August 25th at 5PM from Ottawa Rail Station. We take an Air France bus to Montreal, fly to Paris at 11PM, have a 4 hour layover and transfer to Ouaga arriving around 9PM local time or 4PM EST. Not too bad - one of the shorter flights, about 25 hours door to door. Maybe with such a late flight, Ben will sleep on the way to Paris. I'm sure he'll be anxious/excited so we'll see. Last time he was awake for hours!!

It happened Monday morning following my black belt exam... I felt the immediate need to start packing. This is the ongoing challenge of packing for multiple scenarios - I don't need it anymore, I need it now but will pitch it when we leave, store it now, need it now but will store it when we leave, taking it but need it now so will pack it when we leave... etc. all that times 2 - once for me, once for Ben.

I have the list of stuff to bring which of course is a lot, probably too much. When i actually compile it, I will reassess. I have more things to do than I could complete if I had til October to do all this stuff, and at the moment we stand about 8 weeks from moving out and 11 from leaving.

To make it worse, in all the stress and training I've gained 20 lbs so nothing fits but I'm extremely reluctant to buy any clothes if they aren't on the list... but even then what size to buy? I KNOW I will lose it all in Africa and possibly more so if I buy it to fit now, it won't fit within a few months of arriving. Each time I've lost about 10 lbs in the first MONTH.

As for stuff, ideally I'd like to go with the philosophy of "do I love, do I have to have it (tax stuff, legal stuff etc), does it have sentimental value" but I know that I can't be that ruthless. I can't even do it for Ben's stuff! He's doing better than I am! He's already filled 2 boxes for giving away. I debate culling some of his things so I don't have to store stuff that I'm pretty sure he won't miss in a year like his trains/Thomas stuff and some of his stuffed animals (he has 20 dogs! I havent' counted the rest!) but a friend warned me against that. I have already rented a 10 x 10' storage room, but if I have to store all my furniture, I'm going to need more space!! It's a tough thing to balance - I'll save myself $2000 if I don't need the space plus whatever I sell it for, but then I'll need to replace after and that will be more than what I save/make out of all that. I guess the added bonus would be not having to move it all! And that is worth a lot too!

Too many decisions to be made all at once.