Why didn’t you bring a map?
There wasn’t room next to the jam!
~ The Chronicles of Narnia
There comes a time in every contract when the inevitable beast must be faced. The room you have carefully constructed to feel like home has to be ripped down, folded up and packed into a suitcase, an oversized duffle bag, and a carry on suitcase.
I must get a new carry on suitcase, but that’s an expense that has to wait for a while yet. Maybe next contract.
6 months’ worth of formals, day wear and uniforms all coming off their hangers and folded neatly in place into a spinner case. If shipboard life has taught me anything it’s definitely how to pack.
The person I feel some amount of sorry for in my upcoming packing maelstrom is my ever-suffering, ever-patience roommate Tolly (short for Tolerance, and there is absolutely a reason that she has that name). She and I get along fantastically, and the room has been mostly co-decorated, and we are very proud of it (and often wish that it would get some kind of acknowledgement for general awesomeness during cabin inspection); but the bits and pieces that make up the cabin décor? Are mostly going into my suitcase – the shower curtain, the posters on the walls, the bathmat we use as a throw rug, even the brightly coloured Hawai’I towel and the electric candles (though we rarely turn those on lately), they’ll all get rolled into corners and slide into the bottom of suitcases and come home with me next Saturday…
I feel somewhat badly stripping the room of so much personality. Though I am leaving her the dragon-themed table top fountain, as there is nowhere at all to put it in in my luggage and she likes fantasy stuff as much as I do.
I still have no real idea how I’m going to fit half of a bass guitar in my duffle bag either (don’t ask, it’s a long story) but I’m bound and determined to make it work somehow.