The Proverbial "Who Moved My Cheese?"

Change can be a blessing or a curse, depending on your perspective, according to this book. According to Caboose, it's a curse. There is nothing to be gained from it, nothing good can come from it, it can only be bad.

As I've said several times before, we are moving soon. So soon in fact, that I've started packing some boxes. See, we are doing what is affectionately referred to as a partial DITY. In military terms, a do-it-yourself move. My OCD finally caught up with me after the last move. We were packed in our little duplex wall-to-wall with boxes, and even unpacking was a much bigger challenge than ever before. I decided to do clothes first, because it made sense to me to get them put away in the drawers and closets to see what space I had left for toys. Well, when I open a box that says clothes and there are two items of clothing and the rest are toys, or it was half and half, or worse yet, it was some clothing and items from other parts of the house the packers needed to stick in a box, that created utter chaos. At that point I asked Hubby if we could move all our boxes next time, or at least most of them. He understands my OCD, and he is willing to stack like boxes together in proper rooms to facilitate proper unpacking. He humors me.

Since the box packing started in the boys' room, Caboose was in there part of the time and started talking about the house that we think we are going to buy. This house will mean that he has a separate room from his brother, which he has never had. We had decided that we could still use their bunk beds in Buddy's room, maybe not bunk them and just put them as twins, and he could sleep in there when he wanted, but his stuff could be in his own room across the hall. He liked that his room would be across the hall. What he didn't like was that the beds would no longer be bunked. He'd get to sleep in a room with someone, but it wasn't good enough because it was change. Arg! I mentioned his aversion to change in my Know & Tell post last Friday if you'd like to feel a little more sympathy for him Hubby and me.

This slightly sad conversation led to a sadder conversation about his sister Sparky leaving for college. She's 14. They talked about how she needed to go to college to be able to do the job she wanted (be a missionary) and then he asked how long it would take and could she drive home every night to sleep. That proceeded into a discussion about how long Hubby and I were in college (your typical four years), how he was never going to college, and how he would have a job when he was old enough if he planned to live at home forever, which he does, because he doesn't like change. The weeping began. It was a tough evening as real life began to become a little more reality for an eight year old boy. After he went to sleep, amidst my packing boxes and ripping tape from the roller, I snuck my camera in and took these pictures of him sleeping peacefully.

He has his snowman sheets because he doesn't like change and they will be his sheets probably until they have holes.

He has piles of animals on his bed because he can't put any away in a box because they can't "breath" and he can't stand not to have them out and available at a moment's notice. And then there's the change issue.

Can you see the trace of red, white, and blue peeking out in the middle of this picture by Caboose's leg? Now I don't know if that is officially "Bed Bear" or "Car Bear," but I'm guessing it's Car Bear because it doesn't look very beat up. If you're familiar with Beanie Buddies, he had Spangle as an infant. I got it for him on my 34th birthday, two weeks before he was born. He loved that bear like nobody's business. Without using my hands I can't describe how he sucked on his two fingers upside down and held the paw at the same time and rubbed it. Oh, the memories. Well, Bed Bear only has stuffing in his head now. Car Bear looks a lot better. He became the bear we took out of the house so we never lost Bed Bear, because it was that big of a deal. Car Bear was actually another Spangle that was Buddy's, but somehow Caboose crawled around and found it. We realized the benefit of two bears and just replaced Buddy's. Caboose didn't go anywhere without his bear, sleep without his bear, do anything without his bear. It was literally his security blanket for years. We have so many pictures of him when he was little and one or the other of the bears was in the picture. These bears will always hold a special place in our hearts.

That said, there are a lot of things that are changing right now: Caboose's cheese is being moved, he doesn't like it one little bit, but at least he can find comfort in knowing that nothing will ever happen to those bears.

And because cheese was being moved at paces even too rapid for me to keep up with last week, I fell off the proverbial menu planning wagon. I failed miserably. We started out great with our roast and chicken spaghetti, but then things went downhill from there. We did have waffles one night, and I'll have to post my waffle recipe next week when I post a new menu plan. The good news is, I still have all the goodies in my freezer and cabinets to make the stuff from last week's menu that I didn't make. The bad news is, cheese is still moving rapidly, maybe even more than before, so it will be an adventure to see what the week brings.