Flip Flop

Things are proceeding apace with our move. We're in the process of taking inventory in order to insure our stuff for the move. Part of the job requires listing the replacement value of items, and yesterday we pulled out bulging folders full of receipts and invoices. Fortunately, shoving those things into folders over the past years is going to make this task much easier than it seemed before we pulled the receipts out.

What won't be quite so easy is doing the actual inventory. Oh, it's dead easy to say here's a couch, there's a chair and there's a lamp. But anyone who has even a minimal knowledge about my bride's penchant for acquiring things would have an idea of the monumental task we are facing.

In fact, we want to make sure the insurance company will have no doubts about the number of things we have if we need to make a claim, so we are using the Flip to make a video of everything. Some of them will be interesting films in their own right, I think.

For example, yesterday we filmed "Indiana Linda and the Cavern of Cashmere". Drawer after drawer was opened and one cashmere sweater after another was lifted to reveal yet another cashmere sweater below it. It was a bazaar of goat fur unrivaled in its diversity of color.

Today we will film the documentary "The Treasures of China" in which we explore the patterns of Wedgwood and Villeroy and Boch and others I can't recall. We may expand it to include the Crystal Cavern, featuring Waterford and Riedel, but it may just make the movie too long to be enjoyed.

Of course the real challenge will be to count and document LK's footwear. I would like to do stop-motion animation on this and have several hundred pairs of shoes, boots and flipflops march past us. I figure I can call it "The 400 Sole March". But getting it right will take planning.

So last night I asked LK how many pairs of flip flops she has. "Oh, a couple of dozen, maybe." I snorted in derision, and she put on this wounded tone. "Well, how many do you think I have?" she asked.

I thought about how lately she always matches her t-shirt and flipflops. And I mean always. I guessed she had to have about 50 pairs. "Oh, don't be silly," she said, "maybe 30 or a little more. But no way do I have 50 pairs of flipflops."

I pointed out that she had bought about a dozen pair in our last trip to the US, and surely that must have pushed her pretty close to the half century mark. "Yes, but I left some of them at your mother's house," she answered, as if that somehow meant they weren't her flipflops if they weren't in the house with her. It made me wonder if that meant I was not her husband if I was travelling away from home, but I decided that might take the conversation in a direction I would regret.

Anyhow, she kept talking about it even in bed last night so I agreed to the 30-pair estimate just to get some sleep. But then today she came down in a bright yellow t-shirt. Of course she had bright yellow flipflops on.

"This is the first time I've worn them," she said. After a brief pause, she added, "I forgot to include them in my count last night." The 400 Sole March just keeps getting longer and longer.