Dubious Quality

Let me just say this up front: encourage your kid to swim or run track. 

Eli has settled into being in England again, and he's thrilled. All he needs is his goalie gear for tryouts next week. The logical course of action would have been for him to take it with him, except he was already taking two huge suitcases and two carry-ons when he flew out. Adding a massive goalie bag, a pad bag, and a stick bag would have been far too much.

Enter me.

I knew it was going to take a while to sort all this out. You know how much gear a goalie wears. Could I just ship the bags? Did I need to box up the gear, and if so, how many boxes? How much would it cost? What kinds of documents would I need? How long would this all take?

I mentioned this before, but Eli is so self-sufficient that he rarely needs help, but when he does, it tends to be something thorny and complex, like this. I knew it was going to take a good while, and I knew there was no one to help me. 

I miss having help. I'm incredibly self-reliant, but even I'd like help sometimes.

A brief recap of the timeline that emerged. Talk to Send My Bag (Eli used them when he came back from England two years ago). That spanned three phone calls and half a dozen emails, including a discussion of why I could just ship the bags, but the risk of damage was much higher because they lacked structural support. Spend hours analyzing options for packaging, then playing  infinite Tetris to see how much I could fit into a 28"x25"x25" box (incredibly, all of it except the sticks). Comparing price quotes for one big box versus three smaller ones (each box cheaper, but no difference in total price). It was detail after detail after detail. 

After detail.

53 pounds, not including the sticks. Then seemingly endless customs declarations and documents. Eli's class schedule and term of study, strangely. Every time I thought I was done, something else was required.

It was exhausting, really. 

Today I used the dolly to move the box from the house to Eli's CRV and drove to DHL. It seemed impossible that it would actually ship, but it did. I felt 53 pounds lighter as I walked back to the car.

By the way, Send My Bag was superb. It's the best customer support I've had this century, and I'm not even kidding. No, I didn't get a discount. How refreshing to have people who are highly skilled at their job and excellent at communication.

I guess I did get help. Just not in person.