Move to New OrleansIt’s moving time. Hopefully.

It’s “the week”. What a strange week for it to be “the week”, but here we are. We closed on the sale of our Colorado home Wednesday. We have until the end of the month to clear out, so the new owners can make it their Colorado home. And, as of yesterday morning, we are proud New Orleans homeowners. I bought a flood insurance policy for the first time in my life. The exterminator contract we set up to keep those pesky termites and roaches at bay will be a first for me, but not for my Southern wife. Local Colorado movers will hopefully be here Thursday to load a trailer with our stuff, which we did our best to minimize over the last 6 months. That trailer gets picked up Friday, and we hit the road a week from today.

Of course, nothing is certain in these surreal times. After some research and calls, it looks like moving is considered “essential” in the event of a shelter-in-place order. That doesn’t mean movers can’t decide on their own to shut it down and wait it out, so we’ll do what we’re all doing these days — control what we can control and hope for the best.

So the frantic packing continues, which makes it quite easy for us to avoid going out and interacting with people, save for return trips to U-Haul for more moving supplies. (How can that possibly not be enough bubble wrap?) I’ll post here so you can follow along on our odyssey, hopefully providing you with some virtual cross country travels, and some entertaining diversion from the stress and fear that abounds.

(Please allow me to state the obvious: In these truly unprecedented times, people are hurting physically and financially. I’m starting to see that friends of friends are being taken from us by COVID-19. We know restaurant owners, bar owners, flight attendants, event planners and servers who have had the rug, and everything on it, pulled out from under them. Please know that we recognize any inconvenience our move may experience as a result of this pandemic is the proverbial fly on the horse’s booty.)