Checklist

As you can imagine, moving to Australia is a large endeavor, and lists have become a necessary tool in order to keep all of the details straight. But when you make new lists on a whim, as I tend to do whenever I think of something else that needs to be done and I don't have an old list readily available, things can tend to get rather out of control. Throughout the past few months I have made a thousand lists: reminder lists on post-it notes strewn around my desk and home; mini-lists in various notebooks; more specific lists in Word documents on my computer.

And then there’s the master list. The bible of our to-dos. The big-daddy of them all.

The Headache List.

If something is not on the Headache List, it will most likely not get done. And if that particular thing happens to be important… well… we have our passports, our visa, and our plane tickets, so in the grand scheme of things exactly how important could it really be? (so says person who just wants to get out of the country and can’t imagine anything that could stop her)

Thankfully the nature of to-do lists is such that there is a true sense of completion upon crossing items off. And, also thankfully, Will and I have been diligent about accomplishing things, so we have been able to cross off quite a few items.

Quick side note: I would like to take two seconds to let everyone know how impressed I am with my husband (he doesn’t know I’m doing this). Unlike myself, he’s never embraced the beauty of lists, and he’s definitely never before undertaken something quite so daunting as moving outside of the United States, so I had my doubts as to how he would handle all of the many to-dos. But he has been my saving grace in this whole process. He has owned the Headache List like it is his own baby, and has taken it upon himself to wage war on all items that have had the devastating destiny to be listed within its pages, scouring them from the face of the earth. Congratulations, babe, you really are Rambo!

[Return to actual post] In fact, we have been able to cross off so many items that I find my detail-oriented list not so detailed anymore. Somewhere along the way, the details dwindled down to just a few items, leaving in their wake only the things we really have no control over.

• Rent the house (the real worry of the hour)
• Sell Will’s truck (FYI, we sold my car… and we didn’t have to pay a deductible for the hit and run that happened a couple of weeks ago! Hallelujah!)
• Work our last days
• Finish painting the master bedroom (back in February when we first moved in we got so tired of painting that we left a giant white spot where the dresser used to be… and we totally forgot about it until we moved the dresser out. Surprise! This is a detail, but I still thought it should be added to the list)
• Finish packing our bags and boxes with stuff that we can’t pack until we’re actually leaving
• Say goodbye to friends and family that we have not said goodbye to yet
• Get on the plane

We still have plenty to do, but most of it will work itself out with or without us (besides painting the master bedroom… and packing… and getting on the plane). But compared with what we could have to do, we are in a very good place. In such a good place, in fact, that we have unwittingly backed ourselves into somewhat of a waiting game. And I hate waiting games.

Six days and counting.