Sorting stuff

So, how many states have you been in this morning? Well, thanks for asking! I've actually been in 4 states-- 5 if you count DC-- all before 10:30 AM!

I had an appointment in Hagerstown, MD, to go visit our storage stuff out there. When I was looking at the map last night, I realized that Hagerstown is in the really narrow part of Maryland, right where West Virginia and Pennsylvania squeeze together to try and pinch off part of the state.

I'd never been to West Virginia or Pennsylvania before, and the opportunity to add 2 more states to my repertoire with such minimal effort was really too much to pass up. So, once I'd finished visiting my storage stuff, I drove for 5 miles in both directions (WV first and then north to PA), and checked those off my list!

West Virginia is lovely. It's Wild and Wonderful, if you want to know. I'd seen pictures of the Smokey Mountains and the Blueridge Mountains, and I might have seen some of those. Or they might have just been small hills. Out here in the East, it's hard to tell.

Pennsylvania is a hoot. I was there for about a minute and saw a lovely RV parking lot and a street called Mason-Dixon Road. It's right on the border, which I believe is the Mason-Dixon line.

I would make a fantastic tour guide.

And about our storage, it was very exciting. I went to a warehouse that looked remarkably like this:
I peeked down the aisles for a crate with loads of metal magnetically stuck to the sides, but that must be a different storehouse. Oh, and the rows were much neater and straighter. But otherwise it was straight out of Indiana Jones.

The last time I'd seen this storage stuff was when we were living in Boise in 2009. After Boise, we packed it all up and took it to Washington when we lived with Kevin's parents. I saw some of it then, but 75% of it was just stored in boxes in their crawlspace. Then we took a carload of our things to live in New Mexico, and the rest of everything stayed in Washington until Kevin got this job in DC. Then some movers went to Washington, loaded up our things, wrote esoteric labels on the boxes, and shipped them to storage here in Maryland.

I was excited to see our mysterious storage.

Our things were stored in two shipping crates. Our crates were set aside, and my job was to sort the packages into 3 piles: export to China as HHE (household effects), keep in the warehouse as longterm storage, and take with me today. Most of the items were identifiable, and it was easy to decide where they went. Our kitchen stuff and nice office chair will come with us to China, as will most of everything. Our dining room chairs, larger furniture, microwave, and vacuum will stay in long term storage. And my goal for the day was to take my baby stuff home with me. Easier said than done.

I'd narrowed it down to about 4-5 boxes.

This was based on the labels, which were "linens," "clothes," or "stuffed animals." And let me tell you, it wasn't just stuffed animals in that 50-lb box! It was a big guessing game, since I wasn't allowed to open and repack any of the boxes, but I was pretty sure the baby stuff might be in one of those.

(Note: On my way out, the warehouse man said that he always recommends you be there as the movers are packing your things, especially so you can have some say in what gets written on the boxes. I certainly wish I had done that-- but I didn't know I'd be having a baby and certainly didn't know I'd be moving to China just 2 months before she got here!)

Maybe it was my huge pregnant belly, or maybe it was the tears of frustration that I was trying to keep from falling, but the guy actually let me open a few of the boxes. Three, to be exact. Don't tell anyone!!

Two of them did have my baby stuff in the bottoms, which means I got most of what I needed. I'm pretty sure I'm still missing the box of newborn clothes, which is super frustrating, but at the end of my visit, there was a light at the end of the tunnel.

We don't leave for China for another 3 weeks. But now that our storage stuff has been sorted, they said they'd go ahead and ship it the next time a truck goes out to the docks-- maybe Monday or so. This means that the HHE will arrive in China 3 weeks earlier than I'd previously thought. I don't know for sure, but it's possible that it will show up before the baby does.