watch that last step, it's a doozy

We have officially moved. And the move continued to be at or ahead of schedule the whole time.

It has also left me so exhausted that I am spending most of the time literally sitting on the couch and staring into space. You can't have everything?

So we used one of those companies which brings you a large storage container, and you pack it yourself, and then they come pick it up and put it in front of the new place and you unpack it yourself. (Of course by 'yourself' in both instances I mean 'with a bevy of everyone you can get hold of in the area'.) I am absolutely behind this as the way to do all moves ever in the future, because they didn't try to overcharge us, the container appeared and disappeared when they said it would, nothing got stolen/lost/broken, and, and this was awesome, no one had to interact with any actual human beings at the company except in over-the-phone ways. I value that so highly.

Anyway, after the container Magically Disappeared from in front of the Texas house, Ruth and I threw the cats into the car (in a crate, divided down the middle, and we gave them tranquilizers) and drove across the country. The cats were, loudly, sad. On the first day they were loudly sad every five seconds, alternating with each other. I am impressed with their vocal staying power, as my throat would have gone sore sometime after the first couple of hours. On the subsequent days they only expressed their annoyance for said first couple of hours, as well as whenever we got on and off the highway or did anything else startling. Lucien has managed to achieve a degree of vocalization on the word 'NOW' which means that it is impossible to hear it as anything except 'NOW', because it begins with an N. I am very impressed. Now maybe he could learn the word QUIET. (I mean, he knows it. It just doesn't apply to him.)

It turns out that the best day ever to go to New Orleans is the day after Mardi Gras. All the decorations are still up, but everyone has gone home! Completely delightful. The second night we spent in Knoxville, which wasn't as delightful, because we were in the bit full of chain restaurants and truck stops, and then we got to B.'s in D.C. and collapsed for a few days. Then put the (very annoyed) cats back in the car and--

okay, so it turns out you really, really shouldn't drive from D.C. to Boston in one day if your GPS has a setting for 'avoid tolls' but not, it turns out, a setting for 'avoid cities', and especially if you don't know the geography of south NYC well enough to avoid going right through the city because you don't realize that's what you're doing until it's too late. The 'avoid tolls' settings works-- we only paid $12 in tolls D.C-Boston, which is very good considering if you take the straight coastal route you pay ~$50 D.C.-NYC alone-- but we hit NYC at about 3 p.m. and weren't clear of it till 6:30. This would also be because I had my usual NYC luck. New York hates me on a deeply personal level, always has. At one point Ruth said 'So, you know, if I were driving, we wouldn't have hit those last three construction zones,' zones which included one entirely blocking off Canal Street from the Brooklyn Bridge and one blocking the way onto the FDR northbound, 'but then, on the other hand, I've never driven in a city half this size, so it's probably just as well'. I think it was probably six of one and half a dozen of the other, because NYC loves Ruth but it is not the place to begin city driving.

Then at about the time we hit the MA border it started snowing. The first and only snow of the year thus far. On Leap Day. Ruth had never driven in snow before either, so she got to start that late at night, while tired, in a heavily laden car full of cats who had now been in there like twelve hours now and were beyond annoyed and into calling maledictions and curses on our lineage. Fun! And then I got to take my last driving shift when we actually got into Boston: double fun! Oh, and our windshield wipers decided to make the windshield really dirty, so basically no visibility. Got into the new place about midnight, unloaded, set up air mattress, in bed by 1 a.m.

At approximately 4 a.m., we were awakened by the sound of a cat in deep annoyance. Initially thought it was residual, so I got up and went looking for him to help him calm down. Couldn't find him anywhere. There was persistently one cat around my ankles, who was not yelling, and then there was yelling, and no other visible cat. Ruth got up to help and we stumbled around going but this place doesn't even have any furniture! where the fuck is he?

The refrigerator in our new apartment sits in a nook in the kitchen wall. It is, at the moment, pushed as far back into that niche as it can go without damaging any connections. At the time we arrived, it was pulled forward in the niche so that the door was, you know, sitting directly to hand. It took the cat only three hours from the time of his arrival to get on top of the refrigerator, get behind the refrigerator, and discover that he didn't have the space or leverage to get out from behind the refrigerator. So we got to pull the refrigerator out into the middle of the room at four in the morning. I suspect this of having been his revenge on us for the entire road trip. Well played, in that case.

The storage container showed up exactly on time, and a whole bunch of wonderful, helpful people came over and helped us get all our stuff out of it, and now the place is piled with some furniture and many boxes. And I have been sitting and staring off into space, because I haven't been this tired since the last time I moved to Boston, in 2004. It is not a tired that seems to be dented much by sleep, on a day-to-day basis; it is the kind of bone-deep tired where you have trouble thinking and you have trouble with things like tying your own shoes and you just have to wait for it to be over. I have no idea when it is going to be over.

But we have, officially, moved.

watch that last step, it's a doozy

We have officially moved. And the move continued to be at or ahead of schedule the whole time.

It has also left me so exhausted that I am spending most of the time literally sitting on the couch and staring into space. You can't have everything?

So we used one of those companies which brings you a large storage container, and you pack it yourself, and then they come pick it up and put it in front of the new place and you unpack it yourself. (Of course by 'yourself' in both instances I mean 'with a bevy of everyone you can get hold of in the area'.) I am absolutely behind this as the way to do all moves ever in the future, because they didn't try to overcharge us, the container appeared and disappeared when they said it would, nothing got stolen/lost/broken, and, and this was awesome, no one had to interact with any actual human beings at the company except in over-the-phone ways. I value that so highly.

Anyway, after the container Magically Disappeared from in front of the Texas house, Ruth and I threw the cats into the car (in a crate, divided down the middle, and we gave them tranquilizers) and drove across the country. The cats were, loudly, sad. On the first day they were loudly sad every five seconds, alternating with each other. I am impressed with their vocal staying power, as my throat would have gone sore sometime after the first couple of hours. On the subsequent days they only expressed their annoyance for said first couple of hours, as well as whenever we got on and off the highway or did anything else startling. Lucien has managed to achieve a degree of vocalization on the word 'NOW' which means that it is impossible to hear it as anything except 'NOW', because it begins with an N. I am very impressed. Now maybe he could learn the word QUIET. (I mean, he knows it. It just doesn't apply to him.)

It turns out that the best day ever to go to New Orleans is the day after Mardi Gras. All the decorations are still up, but everyone has gone home! Completely delightful. The second night we spent in Knoxville, which wasn't as delightful, because we were in the bit full of chain restaurants and truck stops, and then we got to B.'s in D.C. and collapsed for a few days. Then put the (very annoyed) cats back in the car and--

okay, so it turns out you really, really shouldn't drive from D.C. to Boston in one day if your GPS has a setting for 'avoid tolls' but not, it turns out, a setting for 'avoid cities', and especially if you don't know the geography of south NYC well enough to avoid going right through the city because you don't realize that's what you're doing until it's too late. The 'avoid tolls' settings works-- we only paid $12 in tolls D.C-Boston, which is very good considering if you take the straight coastal route you pay ~$50 D.C.-NYC alone-- but we hit NYC at about 3 p.m. and weren't clear of it till 6:30. This would also be because I had my usual NYC luck. New York hates me on a deeply personal level, always has. At one point Ruth said 'So, you know, if I were driving, we wouldn't have hit those last three construction zones,' zones which included one entirely blocking off Canal Street from the Brooklyn Bridge and one blocking the way onto the FDR northbound, 'but then, on the other hand, I've never driven in a city half this size, so it's probably just as well'. I think it was probably six of one and half a dozen of the other, because NYC loves Ruth but it is not the place to begin city driving.

Then at about the time we hit the MA border it started snowing. The first and only snow of the year thus far. On Leap Day. Ruth had never driven in snow before either, so she got to start that late at night, while tired, in a heavily laden car full of cats who had now been in there like twelve hours now and were beyond annoyed and into calling maledictions and curses on our lineage. Fun! And then I got to take my last driving shift when we actually got into Boston: double fun! Oh, and our windshield wipers decided to make the windshield really dirty, so basically no visibility. Got into the new place about midnight, unloaded, set up air mattress, in bed by 1 a.m.

At approximately 4 a.m., we were awakened by the sound of a cat in deep annoyance. Initially thought it was residual, so I got up and went looking for him to help him calm down. Couldn't find him anywhere. There was persistently one cat around my ankles, who was not yelling, and then there was yelling, and no other visible cat. Ruth got up to help and we stumbled around going but this place doesn't even have any furniture! where the fuck is he?

The refrigerator in our new apartment sits in a nook in the kitchen wall. It is, at the moment, pushed as far back into that niche as it can go without damaging any connections. At the time we arrived, it was pulled forward in the niche so that the door was, you know, sitting directly to hand. It took the cat only three hours from the time of his arrival to get on top of the refrigerator, get behind the refrigerator, and discover that he didn't have the space or leverage to get out from behind the refrigerator. So we got to pull the refrigerator out into the middle of the room at four in the morning. I suspect this of having been his revenge on us for the entire road trip. Well played, in that case.

The storage container showed up exactly on time, and a whole bunch of wonderful, helpful people came over and helped us get all our stuff out of it, and now the place is piled with some furniture and many boxes. And I have been sitting and staring off into space, because I haven't been this tired since the last time I moved to Boston, in 2004. It is not a tired that seems to be dented much by sleep, on a day-to-day basis; it is the kind of bone-deep tired where you have trouble thinking and you have trouble with things like tying your own shoes and you just have to wait for it to be over. I have no idea when it is going to be over.

But we have, officially, moved.

You can comment here or at the Dreamwidth crosspost. There are comments over there.