This is the first time I am writing to you from my new home in Bangor, Maine.

"My new home in Bangor, Maine" -- I'm still getting used to that. Likewise, my boys are, at the moment, running up and down the sidewalk in fleece sweatshirts and jeans because it is a chilly 79 degrees outside.

Besides the "cold," -- and the fact that I have a virus -- I would say that our move is going about as well as can be expected. Certainly, many military families have had it worse. For you civilians out there, imagine your worst moving nightmare ever, and then imagine doing it alone. But my husband is not on deployment. I've had the benefit of his help plus my parents'. In that respect, this move has been a breeze (forgetting, for a moment, that I've just moved from Florida to Maine right before the coldest part of the year and one week before my children start school). Yet still, I've learned more than I ever cared to know from this experience.

• The moving company's idea of "good china" and your idea of "good china" varies greatly.
• The movers are likely to put your "good china" in a box with extension cords.
• When you let your children play outside barefoot (because their athletic shoes are buried beneath boxes), you only have yourself to blame when they leave black footmarks on the tan couch.
• Black footmarks on the tan couch are the least of your concern when you learn that the upstairs shower leaks water like a fire hose.
• Your husband was right about a tan couch and children being a bad combination.
• It makes sense that the shower floods the upstairs when you consider that the hose to the washing machine floods the basement. In another few months, the whole house will freeze and it can be your own personal igloo.
• The moving company has a language all its own. The toy helicopter and model airplane that belong in the attic were naturally found in a box marked "chapper and plain from attice."
• There is too much junk marked "attice" for a house that has no attic.
• Going to meet your children's new teachers and principal in clothes you found in the bottom of a box is fun, in the same way that those dreams about going to school and taking your SATs naked is "fun."
• At some point, Nilla wafers and peanut butter for dinner stops being a treat.
• Eventually, your family wants a "real" dinner.
• After all those notes you left for the movers ("Roasting pan stays with the oven," "Nothing in this closet to be packed," and "Please leave cable box and remote"), you forgot to leave one that read, "Also, please don't steal our new flat screen television."
• Finding the remote control to your "lost" flat screen television, and knowing that at least the movers can't change channels without getting off the sofa first, is a wonderful feeling.
• The kids really don't need a box full of Happy Meal toys.
• When the movers label a box "Last Minute Items," you probably don't want to open it unless you've had alot of beer first.
• Everything in the "Last Minute Items" box is stuff you put on the curb for the trash and your husband "rescued" in the last second.
• Yes, your husband really does plan to use that electric teeth-cleaning system, the one you've been carting unopened from house to house for the past 10 years.
• If you try to put the electric teeth-cleaning system out on the curb at your new house, your husband will only rescue it again.
• You will have the electric teeth-cleaning system, still unopened, until you die.
• Buying a house without a pantry is not a good idea.
• Tupperware and plastic storage bins are your friend.
• It really does get cold in Maine.
• Even in summer, when the weather is a "balmy" 79 degrees, the hardware stores in Bangor are stocked with heating equipment.
• In Florida, they are loading the aisles with flashlights, batteries, bottled water and other hurricane supplies.
• Judging by the intensity of the heating advertisements and the quantity of pellet stoves at Home Depot, a bad winter in Maine might be just as scary as a hurricane in Florida.
• There is a reason why not many homes in Maine have air conditioning.
  The Home Depot in Maine's decision to give military families a 10-percent discount earns them major kudos.