T minus very little

Well, tomorrow we start moving into the new place. Over the past week our lives have been a flurry of boxes, rags, and dusty sneezes. Our old place is (I'd say) 90% packed, and most of the remaining things are either necessities (forks, underwear) or the scurfy dandruff of doo-dads that life tends to accumulate. Mysterious kitchen implements. Take-out menus. Piles of ancient pens. Bottle caps carefully filled with exactly 5 thumbtacks. Credit card offers and orphaned tupperware lids.
If there is one thing that I hate about moving, it's the end of it all. Not the masochistic moment when you start un-doing all the work you've spent the last two weeks meticulously organizing (aka, unpacking), but rather the final six boxes. Trash cans emptied and filled with clothes hangers (for lack of another appropriate box). Piles of dusty cords and surge protectors. There's a deep-seated aversion to starting a NEW box, when you have a hall, livingroom, and bedroom full of boxes already. And yet that darn desk fan just ISN'T going to fit in the brimming boxes into which you keep trying to squeeze it.
Then there are the endless trips up and down the stairs. Boxes of books, boxes of food, boxes of dishes. Your life seems to turn into an endless Stairmaster driven by an endless army of anonymous cardboard.
Right now it's the calm before the storm. Time to plan, recruit friends, figure out where to get the celebratory pizza. Tomorrow, it all starts in earnest. And away we go!