Movers are coming tomorrow, so we’ve spent all day sorting and organizing for our 12th packout. That’s seven posts plus two mid-tour moves. I think I’m going to call a halt at a baker’s dozen after we move back from Warsaw!

For each packout, we get an extra suitcase for the plane, an air freight shipment, and a sea freight shipment. This time, we get 450 pounds by air, and about 1,400 pounds by sea. We get that sea freight because we came in well under the 7,200 pound maximum when we left Vienna. So, we were able to buy a few things here—patio furniture, a couple of decent desk chairs, my husband’s dream TV, and lots of clothes and shoes—to ship to Warsaw.

Twelve packouts is not actually that many considering how long we have been in the Foreign Service. We have been less peripatetic than most, with a total of ten years in the DC area. I’m not counting my husband’s unaccompanied tour, either, because the packing and unpacking for that were thankfully not my problem!

I’m really, really good at this by now, but also SO OVER IT. Completely burned out on endlessly packing, unpacking, and organizing my shit stuff. Sometimes, I daydream about ditching it all and living in a tiny house. Of course, that would make no sense: haul everything around the world for thirty years then ditch it all at the end. But daydreams don’t have to be rational.

Taz, being a smarter-than-average cat, doesn’t like moving either. (Sadie is very sweet, but not the sharpest tool in the shed.) He went a bit crazy as soon as we pulled the suitcases out. Cats hate suitcases. So, I tried a “calming collar” on him. It seems to be working.

So, there’s that.