A Year Ago This Week

One year ago last Monday, a huge moving truck drove up to our house in Arlington, MA and some of the most inept movers EVER IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD (to put it kindly) began loading all of our earthly possessions into the truck. They began loading at 8 am and finished at 3 am the following morning. I am not kidding. That day and night were one of the worst I've yet to experience.  I could write a whole post about how horrid the movers were, but it would be too long. 

When, at 11 pm, the house STILL had MANY boxes and pieces of furniture in it, despair really set in. It was hot and sticky that day and night, and the movers' horrible attitudes made it even more uncomfortable. They complained about the heat, they complained about the stairs (Hello, it's New England, the homes have stairs. Surely you've seen them before.), they complained about how much stuff we had (Hello, people take ALL their things with them when they move.  We're paying you to put ALL of it in the truck).

Thankfully our children were safely ensconced with friends while John and I lay on the hard, wood floor on the third floor, fan blasting, waiting, waiting, waiting for them to finish.  Our neighbor happened to be awake and texted us to come have a drink on his front steps.  We did.  Finally, around 3, those idiots the movers closed the truck and we drove to our friends house where they had left the door unlocked for us so we could crawl into their guest bed for the night.  The next morning, Emily made us a lovely breakfast and consoled us about the previous night.

We went back to our house to sweep up the last of the dust, collect the last things that would go with us in our van, and say goodbye to our next-door neighbors.  It was hard.  Lucy and Jack, the two littlest in the families, had a hard time understanding what was happening.  They just knew it was sad.

We had a few other stops to make to say last good-byes to friends. Of course, we took so long to say those goodbyes that we didn't hit the road until around 9 pm.  We drove out the Mass Pike, John and I clutching hands while he drove, tears streaming down both of our faces.  It was so painful.  I can hardly stand to remember it.

We made it ALL THE WAY to Springfield (maybe two hours away, tops) before deciding to bunk down for the night.  Given the short night the night before and the emotions of the day, we needed to get some rest.  Plus, nothing like a little sweet hotel time to cheer everyone up!

Our plan was to make some fun stops along the way to Texas, to make our trip more of an adventure than just a slog.  So, first stop was Cooperstown, New York for the Baseball Hall of Fame!  We really lucked out because, in celebration of Fenway Park's 100th birthday, there was a whole Fenway exhibit.  We even saw The Bloody Sock.  You Red Sox fans know what I'm talking about.
  

Here is a really great photo of me in Hank Aaron's locker.  Thanks, Theo!

While it was cool to see the World Series trophy, it made us SICK, I mean, REALLY SICK to see that the Yankees have won 27 times.  Disgusting. 

Yeah, nice hair, Kit.  This must be road trip/traumatic moving hair.

One special thing about our cross-country trip is that we did NO planning ahead. Cool, huh?  I mean, NONE.  We left Cooperstown and a ways down the road we said, "Oh, we should probably try to find a place to stay for the night."  We are not drive-through-the-night kind of people.  We have friends who just drive and drive and drive for hours on end and they turn out just fine.  But not us. We require beds at night.  

So around 8 o'clock I got on the old iPhone and looked up hotels.com.  A very kind representative helped me find a room for us in a town in Pennsylvania called Towanda. What, you don't know it?  We didn't either. But we followed our GPS down some CREEPY, dark and scary roads until we made it to the hamlet of Towanda.  But by now we were freaked out by our scary drive on dark and CREEPY roads, so we named our hotel Hotel Towanda (get it?).  

Of course, by morning we could see that it was just a regular old Days' Inn or something of the sort.  But by night...Hotel Towanda, which is now a part of our family mythology.  See, making memories already.

Which brings us to the next adventure, which happened exactly a year ago today.  We stopped in Pittsburgh to visit our friends, the Ashes. Totally not on the way, but Heather is VERY persuasive and we couldn't resist the chance to see someone who loves us.  Tune in tomorrow for that segment!