Preparing to Depart
The week/s leading up to our big adventure
The stress level leading up to our departure was 15 out of 10. There was SO much to do. I had originally planned to have three weeks off work before we headed out, with one of those being the week we went to South Dakota. But then I stayed on longer, which left me with one-and-a-half weeks off work. It wasn’t nearly enough time to accomplish everything on my personal “leave the country” list without feeling massive overwhelm (live and learn!).
Since we only lived in my in-laws’ house for three years and didn’t bring that much with us (all things considered), it didn’t seem like it would be that hard to vacate. Ha. Hahahahah. I completely underestimated how much stuff we acquired in three years. Holy god. And while we did lots of donating and purging, there was a lot at the end that we didn’t get to.
Fortunately, my sister-in-law will come in behind us and finish the job. We are ridiculously lucky to be in this situation and I’m super thankful for her. I texted her notes as we Ubered to the airport about files to shred, clothes to put up in the loft, and garbage to toss in the next pickup. The lesson here for anyone wanting to embark on any kind of long-term excursion: Give yourself LOTS of time—more than you think you’ll need (and then don’t wait to do everything at the end!).
But let’s back up a bit. What was on our To Do list as we marched towards departure day? Well, saying goodbye to friends and, in particular, shuttling S around to her 3 million parties. No, really, she had social engagements every single day of our last week. And then on top of that, friends dropped by the house to see her (and us) again. Halloween also fell during that week, so C and the girls carved pumpkins and the girls trick-or-treated with their friends. So, yes, there was fun amidst the work, but it was a full week.
C and I had lots of administrative stuff to take care of like paying bills, paying my car registration, getting international drivers’ licenses (just in case we need them), and booking a place to stay in Lisbon. Additionally, I had books to drop at the library; the girls got haircuts; N had a therapy appointment; C had a biometric/health appointment, and I had a wax appointment that I rescheduled three times because my brain was out to lunch and I kept thinking it conflicted with one of the other appointments (it didn’t at first but then it did once I moved it). Honestly, it felt like having pregnancy brain again; I just couldn’t form or hold complete thoughts. Everything kept short circuiting.
We also had to get everyone activated on our new phone plan. (Trying to decide on phone coverage for this adventure was an entire research project on its own that I won’t touch on here.) This was a huge time suck because I got a new phone, S got my old phone, and N got a new phone (her first). Before I could transfer mine to S, I had to back up nearly 19,000 photos. Yes, that number is for real, and it’s from the last three years alone. (I might have a photo problem.) Anyway, I had been working on backing the files up but, not wanting to leave anything to chance, I did a triple backup — to two different external hard drives, plus a cloud solution. It took an obscene amount of time. Then after I activated my new phone, I had to install and sign into my apps, plus re-download songs and podcasts. I imagine there was an easier way, but it’s water under the bridge now.
The most time consuming activity, second only to the phone/photo backup and packing (I haven’t even talked about that yet—I’ll do a separate post), was driving Squeakers to the woman who will be keeping her for the first 3+ weeks. It was a 1-3/4 hour drive each way. She lives close to the woman who will keep her long term for us, so it was worth the drive. I’ll do a separate post on this because finding a home for Squeakers was its own adventure that took weeks and weeks.
One other thing I tried to take care of before leaving was transferring my car to my dad. I had intended to sign the title over to him, but I could’t find the title anywhere and, when I went to AAA to get a duplicate weeks ago, I realized my registration paperwork said my credit union still held the lien, even though the loan was paid off. So I had to get them to send a letter saying the lien was released and I needed them to send it to the CA address, not the SD one; that required jumping through hoops because we had already updated our address. Then when I went back to AAA with the letter, they said I had to request a duplicate title from the Colorado Department of Revenue (aka DMV) since that’s where I originally bought the car. Oy.
This brought flashbacks to when C needed a duplicate title for his car while we were living in WA, only since he had bought his car in CA, he needed to request a duplicate title from there. He ended up having to drive to the northernmost DMV in CA to request it (and then they couldn’t even give it to him in person—they had to mail it!). Bottom line: If you don’t know where your car’s title is and you own your vehicle, do yourself a favor and take care of getting a duplicate now. Don’t be like us and think it will be easy.
There are a few other things I still didn’t get to; I’m hoping I can take care of them from Madrid. Since my phone should work there with no issue, it should be doable (famous last words!). I’ll just have to wait for US business hours.
Anyway, in the end, we accomplished as much as we could and then we threw our hands up. Right as I was about to order our Uber to the airport, our neighbors stopped by one last time to say goodbye. I gave them a parting gift of food from our fridge, LOL. (This isn’t the first time I’ve done that when moving from somewhere, LOL.) Then I ordered our ride, we piled our luggage in the back, we squeezed into the seats with our overstuffed backpacks, and we breathed for the first time probably all day. N leaned over to me and whispered, “I can’t believe we’re actually doing this.” Me either. Even having gone through all of the work to get here, it still felt 1000% surreal.
It wasn’t until we were through security and sitting at the gate that we started to relax a bit, and even then only a little, as we were madly trying to download things to our phones and tablets. Ha!
I think it’s going to take some time for me to process that I’m not working anymore, that we aren’t just on vacation, and that we don’t really have a home. We’re on an open-ended adventure that we can finally start to lean into. What will it look like? We’re not really sure yet! But there will be highs and lows and everything in between.
