Packing and preparing

I've got most of my things packed up; still a few tidbits to find a place for, but mostly packed.

While I was washing and organizing my clothes, I noticed some old video games my mom had put in the AmVets basket next to the washer and dryer. I pulled them out and went and showed B with the webcam.

"Oh, those are collector!" He cried. "Well, collector in my heart," he explained.

I think they'll be mailed back separately, but B just won my brother's old video games and his Sega and Nintendo game systems. They're all classics according to B, and he's trying to find out if he could sell any of them.

Speaking of mailing, we are carefully weighing everything with my mom's kitchen scale so that the majority of items we mail are under 4 lbs, which means the short customs form and less $$$. Grrr for the new postal rules and no more international media rate or super slow and cheap.

My grandma who is 89 called this evening to wish me a good trip and tell me she'd like to chat on iChat soon. She's feeling her age, or just trying to be realistic, because she said she didn't know if she'd get to see me again. I wanted to say "Grandma! Of course I'm going to see you again! You can't die for another 10 years or so!"

I threw away some old vhs tapes I had in my room that I used in high school to tape tv shows. It felt good to get rid of something that really qualified as crap. And while looking for other never-used items, I found my great-grandmother's high school ring. I didn't have it in France and I got worried that maybe I lost it in the move home from college or to France. I still have papers and things to go through. I probably won't finish, and the odds and ends will remain in the banker box under my desk. Three months to go through old stuff, and you never get to it till your last days. It's always the same, isn't it?