what do you do...

...with a giant painting of the Great Wall of China? With years of Japanese fans, cups, clocks, and bags? With a Turkish tea set that will kill you if you drink from it? With walls of books, other books, books, and more books? It's difficult to pack up any house - to clean things, downsize, move to a new home, a new state, a new life. But it is more difficult than you can even imagine to pack up the Smith house.

If you've ever visited, you know why. Our house is beyond random, just like we are, and happens to be filled with a bunch of things we can't get rid of. The biggest bonus of moving is that you get to clean and organize, to toss everything you no longer need and, in a way, start fresh. But there's a catch that's holding us back - an unspoken rule; you don't throw out things that missionaries give you, and you most definitely don't get rid of books. So we're packing. And packing. And packing some more. For the day - whatever day that is - that our "official" residence becomes Wilmore again rather than Jackson.

Good news: that whole thing about moving to "a new home, a new state, a new life" doesn't really apply to us. While it is a new home, it's not a new state, and it's definitely not a new life. It's the same life, with the same people, just in a somewhat different way. More good news: we're not really leaving. Living a nomadic lifestyle seems to go hand-in-hand with being a member of the Ron Smith family; we'll be back. Somehow, we always come back.

It is an unfortunate fact of life that humans can only be one place at once. I've been fighting that fact for years (and almost succeeding, might I add). But when it really comes down to it, we can't be in New Jersey, Kentucky, and Mississippi all at the same time, physically anyway.

So like I said, we're packing, and packing just the things we need. For me, that means essentially nothing but clothes, pictures, and books. But for our family as a whole, that means shelves and drawers and cabinets of what my friends refer to as "foreign artifacts," and WAY too many books. Useful? Not particularly. But no questions asked; the Turkish tea set (and everything else unusual) is coming with us.