July 18, 2012

The to-do list is slowly shrinking...

Ever wondered what it takes to move countries for a year and bring your cats along?

A LOT OF ORGANIZATION.

Operation Purge and Pack made some impressive headway over the last week or so. I have successfully culled my wardrobe down to only what I'm bringing with me (with the exception of a few items which I'm hanging onto for sentimental value). Half of my dresser is empty, ditto closet. No more piles of clothes laying around waiting to be sorted. I threw away a few bags of stuff that was too old or beat up for donation. The rest went to Goodwill.

I made some headway with storing books as well. I loaded up ten of these with most of my bookshelves:


As we use up more litter I'll finish up the books. The first ten are already living in Mom's garage. The empty shelves make me feel trés accomplished. Not to mention my brilliant re-purposing of litter buckets. Mum was also kind enough to buy me half a dozen plastic bins to store my movies and any other miscellany that I have room for. I have a box of those big black trash bags for storing pillows/blankets/etc in. I'm even working on a list of my furniture to determine what's going where. I am all over this shit.

Operation Brit-Kittehs is also cranking along nicely. I'm making final preparations with both the airline and the customs agent who is going to make sure everything runs smoothly once we arrive at Heathrow. The customs agent is going to cost me around $700, which is a vast improvement over the $4000 I was quoted for the whole package. I still have to buy a kennel, but I've got it narrowed down to a few choices. My main point of frustration is that the size I want to get is 1/2" too wide by the airline's standards. The next smaller size just doesn't look comfortably large enough for my two big boys, so I'm going to talk to the airline and see if I can squeak by with that extra half-inch before I actually buy the thing. Unfortunately the industry standard sizes are all pretty much the same (er... obviously), so I might be stuck with something a bit less comfortable if the airline gets sticky about it. If it has to happen, I'll just make the space as comfy as possible for them. Hell, maybe they'll even feel better in a smaller, cozier space.

Operation Gief Citizenship hasn't changed yet. I'm checking my email obsessively in hopes of getting some news soon, but there's still nearly two weeks before I have to start worrying. Which doesn't stop me from worrying, of course.

Cool, now I can check off "update blog" from my to-do list.

No comments:

Post a Comment