Downsizing: Pre-trip preparations

Combined, we are moving from approximately 3,000 sq. ft to roughly 100.  It is a huge change for us both.  I rented my apartment furnished, so thankfully I had only a few personal belongings to either take or pack neatly into a closet reserved for the "landlord." That said, it still took nearly 3 days, with disruptions, of course, for coffee breaks and meals with friends.  Andre, on the other hand, is moving out of his warehouse and into two containers.  We have been at it for a week.  Last night Twyst came by with Evan for dinner and dug up plants from the garden to brighten up his patio.  Ram came around midnight, just after Yoko and I left for a dive.  At 5AM, as sky began shifting from black to pale grey, then blue, I finally climbed into bed.  Peacefully tucked under the cozy down blanket, I fell asleep giggling at the boys, beautiful brothers, saying silly things using silly voices.

Despite the fact that we were scheduled to leave on Tuesday, then Thursday, then today, and now Monday, I am having a lovely time doing what I enjoy most, preparing Butter, our VW Westy, for her upcoming journey. This practice in patience has left me feeling both strong and surprisingly relaxed. I have used the extra time as an opportunity to do few things to ensure that we'll be eating foraged food for the first couple of months of the journey, at least.  If you haven't heard, my goal, and I say MY goal because Andre thinks it's a bit crazy, is to forage all of our food for the next 7 months.  To help make this possible, I decided to make up some care packages that friends have generously offered to mail out upon request.  The packages are filled with foods that we've either foraged from dumpsters, the woods, the garden, our neighborhood, or have been gifted to us by friends.

Thus far, I have made up 4 boxes of food.  Each box contains a well-balaned selection of essential foods that are hard to find in nature--a couple of pounds of brown and jasmine rice, a 5 lb bag of flour, whole wheat pasta, steel-cut oats, canned beans and squash, homemade preserved fruits and jams (blueberries, strawberries, pears, apple butter, cranberry sauce, etc.), homemade pickled chanterelles, a variety of dried mushrooms, raw macadamia nuts, honey, coffee, a nice selection of teas (white, black, green, and herbal), flax oil, chocolate, and soap, as well as a few other random treats like swiss hazelnut cookies, which were actually purchased, gasp, during a recent visit to Switzerland.  We have been diving for months, stocking up on dried and canned goods, and I have spent a lot of time canning fruits that I foraged from my neighborhood and the dumpster.  It never ceases to amaze me the quantity of food that gets trashed, and also the bounty that our neighborhood trees and forests have to offer.  Butter is loaded down with plenty of food for the next month.  Each box contains enough food for a couple of weeks, at least.  Between that food, the wild foods we plan to forage, and the trades we hope to make-- our foraged mushrooms for fancy restaurant dinners and farmers market goodies, and I am very hopeful that we can achieve my goal.  I'm happy to say that Andre doesn't think I'm so crazy anymore... well, at least not for that reason.