Sticky Gum on the Bottom of My Shoe

Don't you just hate it when you step out of the car onto a piece of sticky gum that someone so haphazzardly tossed in a parking lot! It is so hard to get off...and get off you must or your shoe sticks to the asphalt, concrete, or the tile floor in a store making an annoying sound with each step you take until it gets so dirty that it no longer sticks to the floor, but is still attached to the bottom of your shoe. I wonder why it never sticks to the floor....oh, it might stick a little and leave strings of gum in a trail behind you, but gum seems to stick to the shoe more!

Yesterday a big, empty truck appeared at our house....



Lots of shoes, without gum stuck on the bottom, passed through...








...and from porch to truck...







...as they gathered our belongings for a journey half way around the world.

It was packing day and I thought of that little piece of gum stuck to my shoe as I watched the movers place inventory stickers all over my furniture. I sure hope they are easier to remove than gum on a shoe after the stickers have been on our furniture half way around the world in the time frame of about 6 weeks. Surely, those little stickers won't be like price stickers that require extra elbow grease to remove coming off in layers....maybe I need to pack some "goo-gone", just in case!

Packing was easy....we just watched as they wrapped everything in "dolphin skin"....that's what they called it! Interesting stuff...a big roll of slick, gray...dolphin skin...I get it now!




The sound of ripping tape still reverberates in my ears....I should have bought stock in "tape". I would have made a bundle with all the tape that was used to secure that "dolphin skin"!



We even made some friends with a great group of movers that we may never see again. We shared laughter, life stories, womanly advice, and good conversation...




...making the day go by quickly. Even a scale caused us to break out in laughter as one of them tipped the scale....of course, it wasn't made to hold his weight. I'm just glad that it was only boxes that were weighed hoping not exceed the air shipment limits, and not me. Everyone belly-laughed when George, apparently the oldest of the crew, was shown a small box to carry. He bent over to pick it up...I'm sure, thinking how nice of his buddies to think of his back by giving him such a small box...only to find himself unable to budge it at all...a part of the plan all along, when someone packaged my hard-working, steel-toed boot wearing husband's hand weights. My dear, hard-working, steel-toed boot wearing...weight-lifting husband so easily hoisted them onto the dolly so George could manuever them into the truck which wasn't an easy task either as he tried to push them up the ramp.



Thanks, moving crew, for making this step in our journey enjoyable.

Yesterday a big, full truck left our house...



If the shoe fits, wear it well!

Shoes that Make You Want to Say OUCH!

The time has finally come.....the switch from flipflops to closed toe shoes.....OUCH! In Texas, the flipflop season is, oh, so long, thank goodness! and can easily rear its ugly beautiful head on some warm winter days or be seen wearing a coat of snow.

Flipflops are my shoe of choice and when the winter transition comes along every year, I am enclined to become the voice of my feet....OUCH! Oh yes, this little piggy cried wee-wee-wee all the way home!

My feet are not the only part of my being that is screaming OUCH through this season of change. The process of moving to Baku has begun. In my little finite mind, my thinking was....pack a bag and away we go!......NOT!!! We are keeping our current home as a "vacation" home....hahaha! Never thought I would be a part of the crowd that has a "vacation" home! We could go and leave everything as is and have a furnished apartment there, but that wouldn't be any fun, now would it? Actually it is suggested by experienced expat's that you make your home away from home as much like home as you can....so.....we are doing just that! We are taking furniture that is comfortable and kitchen articles that will make meal time easier.....as my hard-working, world-traveling, steel-toed boot wearing husband says "so we are not foraging for food". That just sounds like an awful predicament to be in, by the way! OUCH! But on the bright side, the "vacation" home gets a face lift.....that will be another process, in and of itself!

We have a moving coordinator that says this is not painful at all, even though I feel like I need a pair of waterskis to stay on top of this pool that wants to drown me. Oh my goodness, there is so much paperwork! I don't deal with paperwork very well.....give me a bolt of fabric and I will cut it to pieces, reconfigure it, and give you a quilt.....but paperwork can be the death of me! I might as well be wearing a pointed toe shoe with a four inch heel. OUCH!

Our coordinator told me that the paperwork for the moving company....a complete inventory list...is easy. Has she ever done this before? Well, maybe the list is not so hard, but I have been purging, shredding, and purging some more....wading through

just to get furniture drawers ready to move. Where is Neicey Nash when I need her? Sell, keep, trash? OUCH!

She did say that the most painful part is the medical check....more paperwork! I made it through the stack of paper that even the clipboard had difficulty holding....seemed as though I kept answering the same questions over and over again! Were they expecting me to slip up and some of my answers conflict. Lucky for me, most of my answers were "no"....I'm a pretty healthy person...it must have something to do with flipflop wearing! That wasn't so painful, after all! But before I was finished, I had seen the walls of seven different rooms of the clinic...the waiting room, the restroom, the blood pressure room, the eye chart room, the blood drawing room, the exam room, and last but not least....the shot room.....OUCH! She was right....the medical check was the most painful!

And this season of change continues.......

If the shoe fits, wear it well!