Packin' Up

So a few Sunday ago, Benjie and I had to go up to Milwaukee to clean out and close up my father's apartment. We had to gather all of the personal stuff-papers, artwork, wine fridge (I kid you not-it's in my living room now!), CDs, cookbooks, and pottery and bring it back to Chicago to sort out.

It took us about four hours to finish packing up-luckily some stuff had been packed already. As we were packing up, we left the storage locker unlocked. Benjie went back to get some stuff and found an old man going through the boxes. Ahem? That is not your stuff, mister.

So we packed up the van. Luckily we had no children with us. Or we would have had to strap them to the roof.




See those big silver things in the back? Those are two foldable, portable wheelchair ramps. They are now mine. Dovi has had much need for wheelchairs in his little life, so we're quite excited to have them in our basement. But we got to thinking: Dovi needs the ramps every so often, but, ThankG-d, not all the time. There have to be times when other people are temporarily in wheelchairs, or they are having wheelchair bound guests. How about we help them too?! So we called the people who maintain G'Mach listings. For those who don't know, a G'Mach is almost like a lending library of something that you might need for a short time. G'Mach stands for (I believe) G'Milas Chasadim, or good deeds)\. There are bridal clothing G'Machs, baby equipment G'Machs, medical equipment G'Machs, to name a few. In New York there is even a GPS G'Mach for people who are traveling out of state!

So we are starting a Portable Wheelchair Ramp G'Mach. Sounds a little goofy, but why not? People can now invite wheelchair bound guests and have an easy convenient way to help them into their houses. I'm mighty excited, and hope that the word gets out and people take advantage. I already printed out labels with our last name and phone number and stuck them onto the ramps. We'll see what happens.

Also notice in the right hand side of the picture is a burgundy van? That's my dad's wheelchair accessible van. It has now been towed to Chicago and is parked outside my house. We need to sell it. Know anyone who wants a van with undermount lift and hand controls? I hope it sells quickly...

But let's look at another view of how out van was packed up.


Oy. Makes me stressed just looking at it.

After all the holidays are over, I will begin the enormous job of sorting and cataloging everything so everyone can figure out what's going where. Oh also notice the 2 reams of copy paper shoved by the door? Heck if I was leaving good office supplies behind. I shoved those suckers in.

I still cannot believe the volume of stuff we got in there. Our van was so loaded down that Benjie could not go over 55 on the highway. And I was terrified that our tires were going to blow out. They did not. We got home intact.

Wish me luck in the sorting....