This week for the first time in nearly 6 months, I slept in my own bed. I moved from Texas in early April to Washington D.C. and then to Nouakchott in early July. During that time I have been sleeping on government furnished beds, which aren’t exactly as luxurious as the fancy cooling hybrid mattress my wife and I bought in 2019.

I was sitting at work on a Wednesday morning, when an email arrived informing me that my Household Effects (HHE) had cleared customs and they were on their way to deliver it in just 2 hours. Having lived here for over 2 months, I have come to learn a thing or two about Mauritania time, so I asked my wife to let me know when they arrive, and I’ll head over to help sort the chaos. As I expected, the 2 hours was actually 6 hours, but eventually a team of men moved in nearly 7000lbs of our Texas house.

It’s an overwhelming feeling getting so much stuff dropped off in one rush. It’s going to be a while before our home looks more like “our home”, but some things like our beds, furniture, and art are already making us feel much more settled in, and our home feel’s much less sterile and utopian than it did before. It’s definitely nice to have things that remind you of home, and my daughter L feels like it’s Christmas morning opening all her boxed up toys.

Kudos to my wife for managing the pack-out from Texas, but some things I am just scratching my head over as we unpack things. Did we really need to keep an empty iPad box for an iPad we no longer have? Was a cracked snow-globe with no sentimental value worth sending across the ocean? It’s becoming clear my directive to purge wasn’t as strictly held up to back home as it was for me in DC. I survived in DC for 3 months with two medium suitcases of clothes and 250lbs of UAB, half of which was my gaming computer (RIP). There’s definitely going to be some purging prior to our next pack-out.

I have to leave it short and sweet this week because there is so much unpacking and moving furniture to do, but I plan to share some of our hard work in the coming weeks with photos of our house now that it has a bit more of our touch. Cheers! –Nick