Onward...

Catch: "WTF"

We sold a house. We packed. We scared the living daylights out of the cats pretty much everyday. Our last two days in the house I work up to this:

I have less of the pillow than he does

Cats huddled all around me, head to toe--perhaps they were afraid we would leave them? Perhaps we were afraid we would leave them? mwahahahahahaha

Joe and I packed the truck in 12 hours (mostly). I channeled my inner dentist (if you know my Dad you will get that joke) and per self-review "was surgical with this shit." I took all our mismatched boxes and found the perfect! home for them.

damn we're in a tight spot?

Joe jigsaw puzzled the furniture

We had excellent help for driving across the country...

Enjoying our last meal to not come from a cooler

...and drive we did. I took exactly one picture of my view, which was pretty steady for the most part, not WY though, WY was stunning)--we did OR to WY on the first day, WY to NE on the second, NE to IN on the third and IN to DE on the last day:

Bug splats and all

Blake and Joe had charge of the cats in the pick-up (saints these men, or demigods) and I drove the moving truck and the trailer (it felt like driving the 12-passenger van for my field class...really really, plus I've done this before--a few times). 

The catmobile

it's longer than it looks...

I had a lot of time to reflect on leaving the place that has really become our favorite. I kept my shit together for exactly 30 minutes of the first day. I had music blaring, the window down, and the whole of the high desert filling up my windows. But after a little bit, the full weight of leaving this place hit me. Maybe it was seeing the mountains in the rear view mirror. And I know we'll be back, maybe not on a permanent basis, but you can't keep me away from that skyline. Some prefer the skyscrapers, I prefer the peaks.

I also decided to claim the PacNW as home, or at the very least as where I'm from when people ask me. Usually I just tell people I'm not from anywhere (which surprisingly goes very poorly for the conversation). I just haven't stayed very long in any of the places I've lived--this of course can be measured at different scales (houses/schools/cities/states/countries), but I grew up a wanderer as part of a military family and it just stuck to me. I view this as a positive thing--I've rarely felt that I couldn't go somewhere or not achieve a goal because of distance. But now I also feel ready to settle down. I know we're not going to just yet (rental housing for one, partnership for the other), but, for example, I am ready to buy pieces of furniture with a specific room in mind, or knowing that I might not have to move it again...despite my many moves I seem to have excellent amnesia about how much packing and unpacking sucks. Or maybe it's just the excitement of a new place that balances it out...

At a rest area on day 1

The drive was, as expected, exhausting. To drive across with minimal stops in four days would tire anybody out, but we did it. In fact I can put it in writing now, since we're here...as far as the "on the road" piece goes, this was the smoothest trip I've done across country (and I've done 9--4 of them as an adult). No traffic, minimal disruption from construction, no accidents, no major roadblocks of any kind. We made it to each of the hotels that I reserved each night, we lost nary a cat, and aside from my spectacular skills with a truck and trailer had very few issues. As an aside, I can now include "backing up 200 feet with car trailer" as part of my skill set (may or may not include furious cursing). At least we didn't have to take the car off (again).

I also have to say (because there has not been enough cat-talk in these posts--cue eye roll) that the cats were not total asshats in the hotels. Which is kind of important, since we needed sleep and energy for the drive the next day, and they needed to shut the hell up and sleep the whole time...catlife is sooooo hard.

Pocket as overlord of the room

We rolled into town on evening #4, picked up our keys on the morning of the 5th day and unpacked the truck (it was very very very hot) in a few hours. Some things took some serious finagling to get into the house--our oversized couch for one, and moving the kegerator (gregerator) is always a delight.

New (old) house!

Our house was built in the 1930s and has had a hodgepodge of updating. So far we all (cats included) love the sun porch, and are trying to figure out how to tolerate the dollhouse-like nature of the upstairs--either people were not tall, or they cared less about hitting their heads all the time in the 1930s.