Well, I just picked up my boxes for the lift (ie communal renting of a boat to take stuff back to America for much less than shipping by air.) I ordered, uh, a lot of boxes because I plan to ship everything that I can possibly live without until December–the lift should arrive in August, but sometimes there are strikes and delays. This primarily includes the 140 lbs of books and journals* I schlepped here last June, plus some other books–not too many, actually–that I’ve acquired over the last year and a half, and sweaters and other winter-related objects. I’m sure I’ll find all sorts of other stuff to throw in as well, since my intention is to fly home with the bare minimum.

Nonetheless, as I’ve begun to fill a box or two, it becomes clear to me that I have grossly, grossly overestimated the number of boxes I’ll need. As it should be–we only pay for the ones we ship. It’s nice to see that I don’t have nearly as much STUFF here as I had feared.

In the meantime, it’s kind of fun to fill book boxes. It’s sort of like a game of Tetris.

*I suspect that many of the old journals are going to be disposed of when I move again in a year, once the book-with-memoir-elements I have written is typeset and ready to roll, but I’m not sure about that so back they go. In any case, you don’t recycle source texts until the fact-checker has done her work, so I gotta keep ’em now anyway.