Oh, Pooh! Oh, dear!

I know I promised to write a blog about my new life in Louisiana, but I haven't found a new life. Only boxes. Lots and lots of boxes. 224 boxes, to be exact. It would be a stretch to say I've even made it through half of them.

Here's a tip for anyone who's moving, throw things away before you move. Hired movers pack everything, and I mean everything. You know when you go through a fast-food drive-through and you end up with extra salt packets, plastic forks and such. Well, like a lot of people, we'd toss them in one of the many "junk" drawers in the kitchen, cause, well, you know, you might someday need a small amount of salt and a Spork. You. Never. Know. Well, hired movers are diligent. You paid them a lot of money to move the contents of your house – and, in my case, my car, too – from one city to another. So ... they pack everything. I opened a box and the top was full of all those items from the junk drawers, all neatly packed in mounds and mounds of paper. For every handful the mover took out of a drawer, he wrapped it in paper and stuffed it in a box. A handful of thumb tacks. A handful of coupons that expired in 2006. A handful of coins from Canada. A handful of pens taken from every hotel I've ever stayed in. (Note to self: Stop taking all those pens. You have enough pens.) Handfuls of Sporks. Handfuls of salt and pepper packs.

Our two-car garage is full of boxes. Most of one side has been left clear for opened boxes. It's getting very crowded, and I've made little pathways through the other side. The stacks of boxes are taller than I am, so I feel very much like a rat in a maze. Thank goodness I don't feel like it's one of those Halloween corn mazes. So far the scariest thing to jump out from the maze has been one of the million mayflies that have hatched in the Louisiana spring.

All day yesterday I opened boxes, carried boxes and wheeled boxes on my shiny new hand truck, purchased for only $39 from the local U-Haul store. I found most of the kitchen items. I found the box where the mover packed my unopened bag of potato chips from Which Wich in Johnson City. I ate them. I don't know where we had all these kitchen items in Tennessee. I never knew we had a fondue. But we due. I mean, do.

At the same time, we had a guy here setting up the TVs and entertainment system. We had a guy here setting up the land phone. We had a guy here setting up the Internet. We had a guy here setting up the home security system. And I opened one box after another.

By the end of the day I was exhausted and overwhelmed. I was either surrounded by boxes. Or paper. Or small kitchen appliances. When the security guy arrived, I opened the door and said, "Welcome to chaos!" He spoke in a very heavy cajun accent. I spoke in my Northeast Tennessee accent. He either didn't get my sense of humor or didn't understand a word I was saying. Or both. Either way, chaos ensued.

Despite the chaotic day, it had all gone fairly well until I had what one would describe as a mini melt down. And not in the good way that you have a melt down when you have a party featuring your newly found fondue pot.

It was fairly late in the day, and I had seen enough kitchen items and Sporks to last me a lifetime. I found a box marked Small Lamp, Lamp Shade. So I said to myself, "Oh, here, is the lamp for the nightstand for the master bedroom. I'll open it." (Note: I have found that talking to yourself, out loud, is a precursor to a melt down.)

The box did not contain the much-needed lamp for our bedroom. It was a Winnie-the-Pooh lamp from our old guest room in Tennessee. We don't have a room here decorated in all things from the Hundred Acre Wood. So I just looked at it. And Christopher Robin. And that silly ol' Pooh bear. And I started to cry.

"Why," I said out loud to myself, "did we even bring this lamp? I'm going to have to pack it up again. It's another box in the garage. I don't have any packing tape. What do I do with this lamp, this Pooh lamp?"

Right about then, Amy called on her way home from work.

"How's it going, baby?" she asked.

"Not well," I sniffled like a baby.

With concern, Amy said, "What's wrong? Are you hurt? Did you fall?"

"No," I said as tears ran down my face as I sat on the front steps of our new house.

"Baby," my wife said, "what's wrong?"

"It's a ... it's a ... it's a ... Pooh lamp."

"I don't understand," Amy said, stuck in traffic and not sure what had brought me to this sad state.

"It's a Pooh lamp," I said. "Don't you understand? It's a Pooh lamp. A stinking Winnie-the-Pooh lamp."

Eeyore, Pooh's sad little donkey friend, had never been as depressed as I was at that very moment, but Amy understood the cause of my mini breakdown. It wasn't about Pooh. Or that lamp. It was about trying to find normalcy in a new space.

"I'll be there in a minute," she said, calming me in the best way she could.

"OK," I said, wiping tears from my face.

Amy arrived, and there inside the house was that open box and that Pooh lamp. But she paid it no attention. She just marveled at all the other open and empty boxes I had discarded on the front porch. She was amazed at all the kitchen shelves I had stocked. And all the work that had been completed. The working television. The working Internet. The installed security system.

"You've done such a great job managing all this," Amy said, and she pulled me close and kissed me. Pooh lamp? What stinking Pooh lamp?