9:06 PM, 10 hours until move. Still packing. Everything moves in slow-motion as “Final Countdown” plays in the background.

9:50 PM, 9 hours 10 minutes until move. The relatives we recruited for help (and their panicky  chihuahua) are gone. It’s all up to me and my granny. Let’s DO this. *sob*

10:36 PM, 8 1/2 hours until move. The Honda Accord is not a U-Haul, or a truck, or even an SUV. It’s a regular-sized, four-door car. And yet here we are, loading a good chunk of our possessions into it, with intention to get into it ourselves and drive from Texas to Ohio. On one hand, it feels like a tremendous victory that we were able to accomplish that, but the other hand…pretty much speaks for itself.

12:15 PM, 7 hours until move. Honda is still being stuffed with things. We might have to compromise the laws of physics soon, if we haven’t already.

1:00 AM, 6 hours until move. And so it ends. There’s still a little bit of packing to do in the morning, of course, but most of it is done. Tonight I’ll go to sleep on a mattress pad on the floor next to an air mattress with half of it unusable in Texas. Tomorrow I’ll go to sleep in a real bed in a mostly furnished room in Ohio. (After a 16-hour drive, of course).

The journey from one state to another is very complicated, and has brought up a lot of mixed emotions in me for a long time. But there’s one belief that has never abandoned me throughout all the turmoil in my heart.

Packing. Is. Terrible.