Big Bear and Moving

We had a short vacation trip to Big Bear Lake. It was fun but could’ve been more fun if we didn’t have the impending move in the back (and sometimes, front) of our minds. We originally had planned to stay there for 3 days, but decided to cut it short and get back early so we can start packing.

Packing and moving is an overwhelming process. The toughest part to me is the decisions you have to make while going through all your stuff whether to keep or not. You come across a myriad of stuff which was at some point in your life an essential part of your life. Like Avi’s toy car which was his favorite for a relatively long time and Akshna’s dress which is just the cutest dress ever made. We couldn’t make ourselves throw them out. But we did throw or donate a lot of other stuff. Sometimes you just detach yourself emotionally and get into the momentum of throwing everything. But then you see some odd thing lying at the bottom of a box and it suddenly takes you back to a different place, when the world was different and you were different, maybe a bit younger and maybe a bit naive.

We went through all that multiple times today, switching from an emotionally detached state to an impulsive in-the-trash-it-goes state and vice-versa several times. The more you do, the more it seems that you need to get done. And it will continue for next 3 days until the moving day.

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Avi read a book about a hamster (“Humphrey…”) and now he desperately wants one. Since we got back, he can’t stop talking about it. He said that he’ll use his allowance for it and the cage and we’ll build whatever else we can build at home. He listed a few things that he can build and I asked him to write a letter to Mom and me to convince us that he’ll take care of it. After he handed me the letter, I told him that I’ll talk to his Mom and we’ll make a decision. Tina and I talked that we’ll buy him a hamster for his birthday as a surprise gift and delay him until then, but we soon realized that there’s no way Avi’s going to wait for it that long. Before he went to bed yesterday, Avi had already asked us a few times whether we had talked and made up our mind. He asked us a couple of times before breakfast and we decided that we should just tell him that we’ll buy it for his birthday, instead of him having to use his allowance. So I took him to a pet store to look at some hamsters. Very soon right after our move, we’ll have one additional member in the household.