Diary of a Move: Part II

I've decided that making plans is an utter waste of time and does nothing but map out what will go horribly, terribly, blaze-of-glory wrong...if our most recent move is any indication.

We chose the U-Pack option thinking we would get most--if not all--of our belongings on the truck but were shattered when, after twelve hours of hauling ass, we had only managed to get a fraction of everything loaded. We sent what we could off to Maine and trudged to get dinner with our friend Phil, all three of us filthy and sore. A woman and her daughter were entering the restaurant at the same time as we were and gave us wide berth. I was never entirely sure if it was because we just smelled that badly or if we looked like psychotic murderers taking a brief respite on a statewide killing spree.

That was on September 29th, the day before my 31st birthday. We still had a substantial portion of the house to pack, as it turned out, and we had to figure out where the hell we were going to put everything that didn't make it on the truck. After a comedy involving two U-haul rentals, an expired driver's license (they expire on your birthday, go figure), a drunk local moving truck driver and a substantial portion of our eating-on-the-road money invested in Thermacare and Bengay, we managed to get on the road on October 5th. That being the day AFTER we were supposed to pick up our U-Pack shipment in Maine. We became intimately familiar with our living room floor, being as we were without furniture or a bed for that week. We also became hopelessly dependent on energy drinks, though I was certain I would die at any moment from a heart attack.

My mother called every day asking if we were on the road yet and it became this sick joke between the two of us. We were barreling through New York before I finally admitted we had left. I suspect she held back tears until I was off the phone.

My generous and loving family picked up (and subsequently paid for) the U-Pack shipment and our generous and loving friend allowed us to take up all of her basement and garage with what was left of our possessions. Despite my fervent efforts to the contrary, we wound up with a lot of junk boxes, wearily thrown together in the last few hours.

Finally on the road, typically later than planned, the trip went pretty smoothly. Perhaps the only superstition I allow myself is the one of Better The Travesty I've Dealt With Than The Travesty To Come or, shorter, Balance In Trip-Making. If I'm preparing for a trip, for instance, and everything goes wrong, I secretly entertain the notion that the scales are tipping (if there were such a thing) to ensure an incident-free ride. If everything goes smoothly leading up, I become resigned to catastrophe. Do I have anything to substantiate this superstition? Of course not! Otherwise, it wouldn't be a superstition. Therefore, because the days, weeks and months leading up to the move were the experiential equivalent to dragging my delicate private parts through broken glass, I was convinced that the cross-country drive would be an asphalt orgasm.

Unfortunately, that wasn't the case but we didn't have any major problems save traffic delays and made it to Maine in one piece. Our U-Pack shipment, however, did not but I suppose that was our fault for not securing everything as recommended. There were only a few minor casualties (that we've discovered so far) and the car, amazingly enough, is still running without complaint.