Moving Day to Chicago

Here's a summary of our journey. I'll post in stages, with photos if I have them. As we're now in Winnipeg, this story begins more than a week ago, with moving day, July 10. Before I go further...to answer an important question...our final box count was 362 boxes that we packed ourselves. The movers packed our dishes and other breakables, and that was about 9 more boxes. (and then there was the furniture...) Book box count was probably roughly 60+ boxes of the total, although we don't have an official number on that at this time. (It wasn't an important number for us for customs, so we didn't count it separately!)

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We've made it to Chicago.:) The moving truck arrived, we passed our keys to the new owners of our Kentucky home, and we drove 400+ miles today in our car. We're on the way!
Now the professor and I are holed up in a nice La Quinta hotel with two exhausted dogs. (It's been a rough couple of days to be a dog at our house.) Our journey is going well though. We've already placed an order for pizza, since we're in Chicago...!

Everything has really gone as smoothly as one could hope. We've had a couple of unsettling and stupid electronic moments today. One was when my car phone charger appeared broken and I couldn't find my regular charger either. (luckily, I discovered a backup in my briefcase, what forethought!) and the other? I loaded up several audio books on my ipod. I spent (no kidding) hours and hours on this. And?

Today I discovered that it just wouldn't work in my car plug-in itrip thingee, no matter what I did. It worked before, dang it. I got inordinately peeved about this. Luckily, the professor was able to fix the fuse that had broken in the car while we were in Minneapolis…but I get ahead of myself. This electronics thing seemed a sign that I was totally keyed up but can't find anything real to panic about. We did discover an actual CD audio book in the glove compartment that seems tolerable, if dull, so that's good. Bargain sales are good for something...

Yesterday, when the movers were in the house, the dogs had a rough day. I gave them both what I thought was a "vet-approved" sedative. Sally did well, it really helped. Harry had an adverse reaction, which included a lot of twitching, tail chasing, and barking and howling...for hours. I called the vet in the middle of the moving day and found out that there had been a mistake in the medication in the first place! Luckily, she'd also given us a few doggie valiums which didn't erase the problem but took the edge off Harry's reaction. It was still a pretty long day for Harry and he continued to act out until about 1 AM. He also appears to hate the zipper sound on the crates we are using. As best I can tell, that first medicine was like having a really really bad acid trip for dogs+moving anxiety.

All that was rough but we made it through with possibly the most efficient and professional moving crew we've ever had. Also, our friend Nic came over to sit with us/dogs and brought us lunch yesterday. That was just a godsend and added moral support to the incessant howling and barking Harry was doing...which totally rattled me. Meanwhile, Sally was a delight and slept calmly through most things. You never can tell which dog (or child) will have the meltdown, I guess!

Nic kindly made us (and our friend John, who drove the professor's car to Minnesota) dinner and it was so nice and civilized after a long day of movers/chaos. We then went home to sleep on the floor of our bedroom, in sleeping bags. I had to use a wool blanket and a dog towel and the professor's moving clothes to cope with it. The floor is harder than it used to be! Harry did not go along with the game plan though and I had to take him outside at both 11 pm and 1 am. Meanwhile, the professor snored through it all! I woke up by 5:30. I imagine I will sleep well tonight. I hope so, anyway.

This AM, we walked dogs, got breakfast take out at a local café, tidied up the last stuff, and our nice cleaning lady and her husband came over one last time to clean the house and give us a hug and say goodbye. Very kind of them! Then we handed off our keys to the new owners and went on our way. We were driving by 8:45 AM.
Sally demonstrates the portable crate with aplomb
The dogs did remarkably well today. We had a couple equipment failures...we have these neat canvas and metal collapsible crates for the journey. They weigh 10 lbs a piece and collapse into this tiny long rectangular case--it looks like tents for dogs...I thought it'd be easier for us than hard plastic crates. Unfortunately, they take up a lot of room inside our car and we had more extra human stuff than we'd planned. The luggage or the dog put pressure on the spring mechanism on one of the crates and Harry's crate imploded 2 or 3 times. He was ok about it and we fixed it each time. It was all slightly more difficult because we were in the middle of a big lightning storm and a huge downpour. We worked it out. Glad we brought our rain coats though...and that dog towel left in the car came in handy!

The cool breezy damp weather meant we could rush into a Cracker Barrel and eat lunch. We left the windows open and the car under a tree in the shade. The food wasn't anything exotic but they are fast and well, it may be our last chance for a "meat and three" (meat and three veggies) or a vegetable plate. In the South, of course, the four veggie plate I got included: mac and cheese, fried apples, turnip greens (cooked with meat) and cole slaw. That also came with a biscuit. We probably won't be getting that much in Winnipeg. :) (That may be ok since I can't for the life of me figure out why mac and cheese or that meat in the turnip greens are veggies...)

That is most of the news for now. Our Chicago pizza has been delivered! Hurray! This was the story from July 10-11. More on the saga of "The professor and Joanne move 1300 miles across the US and Canada" later...

(and yes. I finally have internet up and running at home in Winnipeg now. The latest is that our belongings will arrive at the customs depot --and then our home--tomorrow. Hurray! Finally, I can stop sleeping on the floor! I can't wait to sleep in my own bed!)