My Summer Vacation: April 2025

Friday, April 25, 2025

Monday, April 21, 2025

Not Mine

I have been trying to find a good place to store a large, flat box; about 4 feet wide by 3 feet tall by 5 inches thick. The box says, "LARGE MIRROR" and "DO NOT LAY FLAT". I had no large mirrors, so I just assumed someone used it for one of the framed pieces of artwork I had. But I could not figure out which piece it might be because I didn't have anything that large. Maybe they put a lot of packing materials in the box to keep it safe?

Today I decided to move it from the floor where it has been standing & lay it flat on top of the pile of book boxes on top of the table. It would give the cats a larger path around the book island to chase each other in the evening.

But I decided to verify what was actually in the box before I did that. If it was a framed picture with glass, I would lay it so the frame was supporting the glass instead of the frame laying on top of the edge of the glass & possibly breaking it. Turns out it really is a mirror! But it is not my mirror; I never had a mirror that large. I did not even bring the small standing mirror from the hallway with me.

I checked the sticker that the movers attached to each of the boxes they moved. And I confirmed that it is not from my move. My boxes were Lot 022671; almost all of them also have a handwritten number with a circle in the upper left corner on each side & the top of the box. The mirror box was from Lot IR11597 & had no handwritten number anywhere. It is unlikely the owner of the mirror received my 2 boxes of cookbooks from the kitchen & the box with the rechargeable batteries & charger in exchange since the label looks quite old & faded, is from a different sequence, and possibly even from a different moving company!

Sticker from my lot.

Sticker on mystery mirror box; looks like bottom word might be name of moving company, "Isaac's"?

So, for now, the box will remain in the same location it was when I started this exercise. But I am placing it in a more upright position so the stress will be distributed more evenly. The route for the kitties night time play sessions will also be somewhat wider.

FYI - I never filed a claim for the missing boxes since I did not know that they were missing until about 6 months after the boxes were delivered. On delivery day, the boxes were all piled in the living room since the house repair work was not done yet; it took me that long to move the boxes to their respective rooms & note which boxes they were. My delivery had been delayed due to unforeseen circumstances for the moving company on an earlier delivery & the movers were working in the dark; I did not want to slow them down by having them tell me what the numbers were as they unloaded & I updated my moving app. How might this have happened? Because the house was not ready for me to move my boxes in when I left Washington in June, they spent about 6 weeks in a storage facility, I think in California, before finally making their way to the house. The mix-up most likely happened at the storage facility since they would have been unloaded from the original truck they were loaded into at my house.

Later in the day I had to make a small adjustment. Since the box was no longer leaning against something for support, when the cats jumped on it, it would tip to one side. I didn't think the constant tipping would be good for the mirror. I turned one of the book boxes on the shelf so it stuck out enough to support the mirror box. This should keep the cats from breaking the mirror.