More than six months after we packed all of our remaining belongings (at least those that wouldn’t fit in the four suitcases we schlepped through the airports) into 32 boxes, we finally received them. It was like Christmas! Except we knew what we were getting. And it’s May. And the wrapping paper was plain white, and there was no tree, or lights or any other decorations signifying the holiday. And it’s about 80 degrees outside.

But other than that, it felt like Christmas!

We were excited to finally dig into the rest of our belongings, some of which we forgot we even owned, and some of which we wondered why we kept. We probably could have cut it down from 32 to about half of that, but hindsight is 32-32.

Surely no one else remembers, about 80 blogs ago, that when we initially sold all of our stuff at the estate sale, I discovered I owned about six hammers. Well, here we go again. We had packed a hammer, and I had already been forced to buy one here. Of course, the one I bought here is metric, so there is that. Ha! But Lord Almighty if I end up collecting another hammer before I’m done, I’ll be writing an episode for The Twilight Zone. The title will have to be something about getting hammered.

The only casualties were onion salt and onion powder of all things. We packed all of our spices along with our kitchen stuff, and we’re glad we did because the Portuguese have an unfortunate habit of labeling all of their spices in another language. And of course there’s always some spice you might buy once a decade, so I’m sure we’ll be happy to have that one a recipe calls for but that we would have never thought to have purchased ahead of time. In addition to that, the spice selection in American grocery stores is much broader than it is in Portugal, so I’m sure we have some unique items. Heck, a couple of them might be illegal for all I know.

Anyway, for some reason, the onion salt and powder expanded and hardened to the consistency of a rock in their little jars. Nothing else did that. Now I’ve got to go to my translate app and look up onion (ok I just did it, and it’s cebola), and spend the 27 cents it probably costs here to round out our spice collection.

Pretty much everything else made it in good shape. My heartfelt thanks go out to my sister Lynne and my good friend Mark Meyer, both of whom were indispensable in making sure we got our stuff delivered.

There truly is no place like home, especially when you have your last 32 boxes.