My apartment now looks as if someone is moving. That is good I suppose, if it is real evidence of progress being made. I’m not so sure that’s the case. If it is progress, it surely is accompanied by chaos. I’ve started with china and crystal, which coincides with the pitchers and catchers reporting to spring training. That is apt: both foreshadow something happening soon but without any real indication of how things will turn out.

I am going through a remarkable amount of newspaper. I also have on hand the fun packing stuff: bubble wrap and bio-degradable peanuts. The latter are a wonder; they weigh nothing and dissolve in water. They will also disintegrate into a thousand tiny pieces when they land underfoot which they do with an annoying frequency. My dining room rug has small mounds of this white sand and my hope is that they don’t somehow bond with wool they way they do with water. Where is my son the materials engineer when I need him?

After packing medium-sized boxes with serving platters, bowls and other odd shapes, I started in on the upper reaches of the kitchen cabinets.  I really must never say again that I don’t have enough bowls.  Eight pie pans, is that sufficient for one person? If I ever host Thanksgiving again, will I make eight pies? I don’t think even I did that in my heyday. How about souffle dishes? I’m down to a mere three large ones and four small ones, leaving aside the eight tiny ones? What did I ever use them for? Olive pits, as I recall, but eight of them? Bear in mind this was after a terrible purge of things unused, unwanted, cracked or stained two years ago. I’m seeing I wasn’t a merciless as I thought I had been.