This morning I turned our front room into a staging area. This is done by clearing out all the clutter and then filling all the newly created empty space with piles of stuff that needs to go with Howard to Comic Con. Around 2 pm Howard and I looked at the pile that had begun to accumulate. We were both mentally calculating how it was all going to fit into his Volkswagen Beetle. I turned to Howard and said “Why don’t you take the van?” Taking the van gives Howard plenty of cargo space. It lets us pack things for ease of transportation at the other end rather than compressed for size. It might even let him pack along a full sized dolly to help him wheel boxes of merchandise around. We hadn’t considered it before because I’d been planning to pack the kids and travel while he was away. I’m no longer planning to do that because my kids will be spending time with their cousins the first week of August. So now Howard is taking the van and I’ll be left with the Beetle. This means I can’t go places with all of the kids at the same time. They don’t all fit in the Beetle, but in an average week I don’t do that anyway. If we need a family outing, we’ll walk to a park.
In order to get the van ready for the trip, I took it to Jiffy Lube. It was a very long wait, which is to be expected at 4 pm on a Friday afternoon. I can tell I haven’t been out of the house or away from the kids enough lately because sitting in the Jiffy Lube waiting room for two hours was soothing. Now I just need to kick myself into gear and get the rest of the packing done.