Aside from a “BRB, MOVING TO SEATTLE!” post I was thinking about putting up tomorrow, this will be my last entry until we get there and get Internet. So…a week and a couple of days, maybe, hopefully no longer since it’s so much easier to find directions and everything else when I’m not reduced to my phone. I’m also fully aware that I didn’t have a smartphone or the Internet the last time I moved across the country, so what the hell am I bitching about, anyway?

Here’s what I’m bitching about: I’ve spent the last 5 hours packing up the kitchen. Just the kitchen. When you have two cooks in the house – one professional, the other for pleasure – you tend to acquire stuff. And it’s all stuff we use. I’ve packed far more kitchen boxes than I have any other boxes, and although I don’t have all that much left to pack, I’m already exhausted and I’ve tried putting my suitcase together like four times without really understanding how much I need or remembering what I’ve already put in there.

I’m just now taking a break to eat (takeout, since there’s no more food and I packed all the flatware) and maybe make my back and legs stop hurting for a little bit. Then I get to take a shower, do a load of laundry, finish packing my clothes, and wrap the assload of framed art in this house because for some fucking reason I can’t stop acquiring it even though it’s a pain to move around. Oh, and pack up the bathroom and try to assemble a Last Minute Box full of stuff like coffee, snacks, and whatever else we realize we forgot to pack into the truck. Oh OH, and I have to start cleaning. Vacuum this place, at least. Even I’m starting to get grossed out by the layers of hair, dust, and grainy dirt that’s settled over everything in the past few weeks.

We’ll clean more thoroughly tomorrow once the truck is packed, and then I’m meeting with my editor in the evening because hopefully he can give me a reference to KEXP (also he’s cool, and I appreciate the opportunities he keeps giving me even though I’m usually convinced that I’m talking out of my ass). While I’d love nothing more than to start sleeping now and keep doing it for roughly four to eight days, I have so much left to do. Driving. Cat wrangling. Worrying that some meth addict will break the window of the truck and just drive it and all of our stuff away. I told Graham the other night that I’d made peace with the fact that I wouldn’t sleep well, be comfortable, or enjoy myself for a sold three weeks – the one before, during, and after the move – although I kind of hoped at the time that I was wrong.

Unfortunately, I’m wicked smart, so of course I was right.