In that famous scale of stressful events in a person’s life, moving is ranked higher than divorce, higher than the death of a parent, higher than the death of a pet, higher than the death of a divorced parent’s pet. The only life event that it is ranked below is one’s own death.
...mauled to death by wild animals...
In theory, this seems appropriate. In practice, however, there are many deaths that, to me, should actually be ranked well below moving. Sure, falling out backward from the window of one of those gondolas that ferry people back and forth high above our nation’s amusement parks would be more stressful, but passing away in one’s sleep from natural causes is a walk in the park, comparatively. I’ll give you being mauled to death by wild animals, but an embolism in the brain is strictly in my corner.
All of this is a roundabout way to introduce the modest story of the move that Heidi and I made from Austin to Baltimore. Perhaps we should have taken it as an omen that on the night before we were to close on the sale of our house in Austin (which, not coincidentally, was also to be my last day at work and the day that we left for Baltimore), I went to bed feeling a little off, and awoke at about one in the morning with a raging fever. Within the course of five minutes, I went from shivering, to shaking, to shaking uncontrollably and wondering whether I should go to the emergency room.
As it turned out, I just put on about 4 layers of clothing, went back to bed, and woke up in the morning feeling shaken but at least functional enough to go sign my name multiple times. To let you know how shaky I was feeling, let me just say that I traded my morning Mountain Dew in for a glass of something fizzy and allegedly medicinal without even a whimper of protest. The surreal experience of signing over the place you’ve been calling home to strangers is only heightened by a good, hard post-cold sweat haze.
I made it through the closing, collected my things from the office, and then crashed for the afternoon. We had decided to go ahead and leave on Tuesday evening to avoid traffic on I-35 and to take some of the miles off the next day’s drive. I woke up feeling well enough to drive, so we were off.
Our first day of traveling went smoothly, almost too smoothly. We didn’t hit any traffic, we successfully smuggled our three cats into the hotel room (Red Roof allows one pet per room, and Mokey is kinda too big to really smuggle). The parking lot was big, mostly empty, and went all the way around the hotel, three things that are key to successfully parking a huge moving truck. We slept well, almost too well...
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