Death by Paper Cut

This is the term I use a lot when I feel like all the little tiny things are slowing compounding and threatening my sanity.  So when we decided to uproot, it seems that was the Universe’s invitation to “come at me, bro.”  All the little cuts are starting to sting, and I’m just putting on the band-aids until we leave!

Moving your family across the country is filled with tiny things that you don’t think about in your daily life when you’re settled in.  Mail, for example.  It arrives in that metal receptacle every day.  You toss the junk, ignore the bills until the 1st and the 15th, and go on with life. So, when someone asks for a forwarding address, you kind of have to work on that!  Thankfully, the USPS allows you to rent a PO Box online.  (Unfortunately, you have to arrive in person to verify your identity and pick up the keys.  I am working around that by asking a family member to be the primary contact, with our names as authorized users. They just have to agree to check the box until we arrive!)

Getting there means prepping your vehicle for a long-haul trip.  With over 135,000 miles on the odometer, I knew that I would need a tire rotation, a good spare and jack, my first tune-up, and an oil change.  And possibly a new radiator.  Wait, what?  Oh, yes, that little detail.  I’ve had a slow leak for a few months but couldn’t determine the source.  Yesterday, I watched the needle bury itself on the H side of the temperature gauge then the warning light system have a minor seizure.  The slow leak turned into a total system failure on the side of the freeway. (Stay tuned.)

The other vehicle, well over a quarter million miles in, needs to be set up for transport.  The moving company needs to be coordinated. Housing in another state needs to be researched. The road trip needs planning.

And the laundry still needs to be done. Yes, the laundry. Well, apparently the washer and the radiator decided to run off to Turks & Caicos together.  Or something.

After months of listening to the washing machine sound like an aircraft throttling up, hoping it would just… make it… to June… it finally went bang (like, for real. Bang.) and that was the end of that. It didn’t even finish the spin cycle. Rude.

The debate was to get a shiny new washing machine and move with it, get a really really cheap washing machine and sell it before we leave, or find a laundry service.  We aren’t taking the dryer, so the first option seemed dumb. And of the two other choices, a laundry service seemed the least expensive. Now I don’t have to do the darks in the tub anymore.  (Yes, I was legit doing the Willy Wonka ‘Cheer Up Charlie’ scene in my bathroom. And I *really* could have used that giant wooden fork.)

As far as send a vehicle cross-country, we are collecting quotes, and it turned out to be a little more expensive than I imagined. That’s disappointing.  However, I had a fantastic experience with PODS. The best part was that I mentioned a 5% discount as a Discover cardholder, and the customer service rep bumped it to 10% just for good measure. It was the least stressful phone call I had to make.

Now, I get to work on the road trip.  We are going full Griswold on this thing. I might even use my roof rack for good measure.