Monty Python's Moving Circus

Put your life in a box. Better yet, put your life into 147 boxes with another hundred or so smaller ones packed inside most of them. Then take it out again. Moving is sort of like pushing a larger than usual pig that's been broken up into pieces--call it a pigsaw puzzle-- through a dyspeptic python while reassembling the pig as you go. What comes out at the end is supposed to be a furnished apartment with your belongings more or less intact and sort of where they are supposed to be. Moves actually take longer than this; I will be rearranging books and filing stuff and moving furniture and replacing the long lost Savannah sideboard well after the last cardboard box has gone.
I placed an ad in the local Freecycle advertising free moving boxes and three ladies have come, so far, to pick some of them up. This saves the boxes from the recycler and gives the ladies a welcome assist on their own moves. The price of boxes has tripled since I got these (and about sixty per cent of my boxes were actually found at the college or in the recycling bin in the basement--my Christmas presents last year were mostly made of cardboard.)
And shipping the boxes will add 100 per cent to the bill, due to the increased cost of gasoline. So everyone wins.
Most women in Oakville are either retirees or very young women with small children. The ladies who got the boxes all had kids, and two of them brought the children with them. I learned something new about Gizmo today--she is very, very good with very small children. The kids, age 2 1/2 and 6, were fascinated with her and she actually went over to be with them, only meowing when they insisted on petting her while she was eating. She wasn't afraid, never showed signs of anger, and the kids were pleased to be told that 'she likes you'.
Gizmo is a truly Great Cat.