Sarah Jane Humke

Last Thursday my container arrived in Central Iowa.  I had found out the day before that it had been sitting in Cedar Rapids for several days as no one seemed to have contact information for me.  Also, it had been inspected by customs and I had a nearly $500 charge that I needed to pay before I could get at my stuff.

I didn’t take a picture of the container though I wish that I had.  It said in very big letters something like Mexicanana International on it.  I have to admit, had I been a customs person just seeing it I would have wanted to inspect it myself.  Anyway, the truck came with 4 guys to unload it into the storage unit.  Now, I have half a storage unit, the other half looks like it has grandma and grandpa’s detritus that none of the kids or grandkids wanted and is waiting to be sold off at auction or garage sale.  It’s very tidily arranged on tables or planks put across saw horses and labeled with things like, “Grandma’s telephone and sewing supplies”, or “Grandpa’s BBQ equipment”.  The tables and saw horses are precisely lined-up along the line in the concrete floor which denotes the middle of the storage space.

This is what it looked like at about 9am on Thursday morning as you entered the door.

And this is from the back of the space.

To give you perspective it’s about 30′ long by about 10′ wide and around 8′ tall where the roof meets the walls.  This was what it looked like after the guys left on Thursday from the door.

And from the back (as far back as I could get!).

And from a slightly different perspective…

I’m thankful for the movers on this end for taking the bubble wrap off of all the large plastic crates for me.  However, I had to open dozens of large boxes to get all the Deli-Cat and cat litter buckets out.  They packed them anywhere from 2 to 4 to a box as well as all the bags of wool and yarn.  Their labeling of the boxes was more than a little esoteric and creative.  More than one box labeled with “clothing” was found to contain yarn or even books.  Some of the boxes were labeled only with what was on the very top of the box, even if it comprised only a very small percentage of what the box contained. This has made finding the half a dozen things that I really wanted to get out sort of like a very bizarre Christmas where I’m battling open boxes taped very securely (I will say this for them, they didn’t skimp on tape or bubble wrap!) to find my own belongings in extremely odd groupings.  My bathroom stuff sharing a box with a tambourine and other musical instruments or a whole passel of shoes from the bedroom with kitchen equipment (that last one was labeled “dishes”).

While naked, I look as though I was trying to be a leopard for Halloween as I have that many bruises randomly marring my legs and arms.  My hands are completely unladylike as nearly every knuckle has been scraped raw.  Speaking of unladylike, the popping of my knees and creaking of my ankles as I stand or sit would make a proper lady check that the floorboards weren’t about to break.  Moving heavy boxes and furniture from 8′ in the air has really left its mark on me these past days.

While we were unloading, the guys were on the lookout for any boxes labeled “conservatory” or “pots” as all the pots were not put into the storage space as well as my shed parts and spinning wheel.  Oh and the sofa, can’t forget that!  I had driven Dad’s cargo van over and it was full when I left with a few things blocking the walking space in the storage unit for me to pick-up the next day.

The shed was a bit of an adventure as I had all the parts for it except the special plastic bolts that hold the whole thing together.  They were all carefully labeled and put into a 2.5 gallon zipper bag which ended-up getting put into a plastic crate that I thought had yarn in it.  I only found them today and had been going over plans to somehow lash the shed together without them at this point.  However, I was looking for yarn (stop laughing! It was specific yarn for a Christmas project!) and I opened this not-yarn container and voila! there they were.  I also found the yarn (I think it’s the same color as Lighting McQueen.  I’m not all that up on Disney characters.  It’s red at least!) so today was a total win in the “adventures-in-finding-stuff-in-a-solidly-packed-30′-storage-unit”.

I also built a shed today.

Rawr!