Umbrella Anyone?

Most of my "extra" things are packed up in a storage unit. I wrote about here before. In preparation for near month-long trip during the month of July, I stopped at this storage unit at the beginning of the first week of the month. I needed to dig through a little bit of it because I knew that the carry-on bag which would be best for me to pack (one very similar to this, yet, yes, the one I have is blue 😁) wasn't located "right inside". I'd set up the unit in so that I'd be able to essentially be in the unit & shifting things around, even if it'd happen to be raining, etc.

This time, however, knowing that I'd be digging a bit deeper into the unit, & knowing that I had the time of the day (it was hardly mid-morning when I'd begun), I also ventured to get planks of wood to place underneath everything since I knew I'd be shifting around most everything anyway. Placing the wood became important because there was always too much moisture in that section of the storage units; the company hadn't left enough stone in the vehicle passage & each time it rained an oversized puddle formed. That puddle dispersed itself via evaporation throughout all of the nearest units, including mine. 😒

So there I was mopping up all of the darkened condensation & I took what was supposed to be a quick break to go & get wood for the base of the unit. This break did take longer than I'd anticipated, yet I returned to the unit & continued shifting things around & pulling boxes & totes out & into the stoned passage way where vehicles park & unload. This was the only way to re-sort through the containers I had in addition to also properly placing the wood planks (slats, whatever to call them 😐) once I'd hand mopped up.

This is also where the nightmare began to form. At the point where about 85% to 90% of the items I own were sitting outside the storage unit, the sky opened up & a heavy rain began to fall. I couldn't process it quickly enough. All I could do was grab all of the wood from my tiny compact hatchback  in so that I could close the hatchback & keep the inside of my vehicle dry. Then, just before the heavy rain turned into a pouring rain, I managed to place about a half dozen of the largest of these that I had into the back part of the unit. Then I just began grabbing everything & anything & thinking to myself, "No matter how fit & active I might be from running marathons, hiking trails, & spending time once a week on a bicycling path, I simply have two hands & two arms. I cannot manage re-packing this storage unit any quicker, any better, just by myself."

This also didn't necessarily help me out except to assure myself I really was doing the best I could. Somewhere in these same thought paths I was screaming out loud, "Why Lord?" Yes, I was actually doing this. And I believe most any Christian would've done the same thing had they been in the same situation.

I'd created organization that morning when I'd brought particular yarn to one section outside the storage unit, nearest my vehicle. This was the yarn I'd planned to crochet with first when I returned from being away a few weeks later. There were also various bags of yarn which I knew should be toward the front of the unit, though I'd not be crocheting with them all that immediately. I'd sat them in a different section outside the unit. And there were plenty of other, random bags & boxes & totes about too.

It being the first days of July I knew I'd have until well after 8 p.m. to finish this laborious endeavor. No, I didn't "check the weather report". I mean, I sort of did, except that the rain forecasted was minimal & lots of the recently forecasted rain hadn't happened as expected. I'd missed many opportunities in the previous months, & at other times, to do any part of this sort of project because I was avoiding forecasted precipitation & any amount of potential wind too.

Here it was, late afternoon, & everything that meant something to me was either damp or worse. 😡 I managed to squeeze everything back in that unit, even my bicycle & my bike rack: two odd-shaped items.

I'd called my parents & they were on their way to assist. Once everything was inside the unit I called them back because I knew they were pretty far away & that helping out that evening really wouldn't have amounted to much. I didn't know that they'd cleared out their van in so that they'd be able to pack into it what they could before heading back to their house for the night.

I learned when we touched base the following morning &, because rain was in the forecast once more, I worked as absolutely quickly as possible to re-unload & find the wet yarn to get it dried out in the warm sun before the clouds would take over again later.

Along with losing lots of paper/paperwork (just too wet to try & recover), plenty of other items really weren't worth much salvaging. There's lots of great emotional distress in this, especially with plans to be away (the other-side-of-the-nation kind of away) for a few weeks. I did my best to section out the damp & wet yarn skeins. It was so unfortunate with thin-walled cardboard boxes collapsing in my hands.

It was also frustrating to lose the organization of the compartmentalizing as I did have it with various partially used skeins specifically in particular containers in so that I'd know for what next project they were ready, among other organizing reasons. A few (it always seemed to be the white or pale yellow) skeins would drop to the stones. All I could think was, "Why is it that the lightest colors are falling to the dirt of the ground first?" As I'd be shaking my head & proceeding onward.

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