Packed!

Poor Dan. After a week and a half of getting out of bed at eleven o'clock, today he goes back to school and I have to wake him up at seven. His little bewildered face! I give him ten minutes to wake up while I go to make coffee but I think he just falls back to sleep. But after a shower, he comes down for breakfast and you wouldn't have thought that he'd been woken up four hours earlier than usual.

Poor me. So, today's the day the removal firm has been booked to pack up (almost) all my belongings. The stuff in the cellar - largely consisting of CDs and DVDs - is still boxed up from the last move and I think the living room is kind of ready. But I don't know what to do about the kitchen and the bedrooms. I mean, they're coming to do the packing; what I am supposed to have done?

My anxiety manifests itself by causing me to imagine how cross the removal people are going to be with me and wonder what else I might do in the hour before they arrive. I do some email as a kind of displacement activity before forcing myself to concentrate on the task at hand. Why do I find it so hard to bring the skills I have at work to practical situations?! And thank God I'm not like this at work.

I do the washing up and put the kitchen items I want to keep in a box in the living room. That feels a bit better but I still don't know what else to do. There's a noise at the front door and the panic returns; the fear of being told off by the removal people because I haven't done whatever it is that people possessing common sense do when they have a removal firm coming. A voice calls out "Hello?"

IT'S THE MINX!

She has taken the day off work and come up to help me out. I could actually weep with relief. And from then on, everything goes smoothly. The man, Richard, who arrives to do the packing seems happy with the cellar and living room and cracks on with boxing everything up while the Minx and I sort the kitchen and the kids' bedrooms.

Finally, there is just my bedroom left. Two rails of clothes, boxes of t-shirts, piles of jumpers. There is a gleam in the Minx's eye and, for a moment, I wonder about her real motivation for coming up today. She sets about the task of sorting the clothes with relish. Soon there's a pile for the charity shop, a box for storage and a rapidly filling bin liner. The Minx is merciless and by the time the removal boxes are filled, there are three bin liners full of clothes plus the charity pile, all of which I am saying goodbye to. What's left, though, looks remarkably like a normal bedroom and I find I feel quite relieved.

And after that, it's all plain sailing. Richard is delighted that he has almost nothing to do upstairs, and by three o'clock he's gone and the Minx has headed south to be home for the miniMinx. And my life is in boxes.