Day one (and again, and again)

Its no secret at this point that I was planned to leave many days ago, and am a little behind schedule. As someone who has never done a major move like this before, there are two things I vastly under estimated:
1. the amount of time/coordination it takes to say goodbye to everyone
2. the possibility that the extra stress on your body will make you physically ill

Trying to get the word out, rally my people, and spend enough individual time with them to feel like it was a "legitimate" goodbye is complex and takes many days and/or interruptions while packing. Even my last night in Baltimore people were still shocked to hear I am moving to LA. I tried to set up small group hangouts, dinners, lunches, random stop-ins, and a big finale party etc so that there were multiple opportunities for everyone texting me "I want to see you before you leave!!" to do so.

Girls night dinner!

Family Reunion

Planning and thinking about the move itself was something I anticipated - finding the time and working out the logistics to say goodbye to everyone is something I did  not.

Amidst finally getting mostly packed and moved out, I made two last minute trips to patient first and ended up with 4 prescriptions that I took/am taking on the road with me. I thought I had magically avoided any physical side effects from stress, but of course it all caught up with me the morning I was originally supposed to leave. Luckily now multiple tests have been run and mostly found negative, and what we can treat is being treated/shouldn't be an issue.

Given these situations, I am still extremely happy to only be 2 days behind schedule (haha, not that I have an actual schedule). Today I spent the day wrapping up/packing what I could fit into my car and left around 4pm. Traffic through Balt/DC/VA was atrocious and set me back about 2 hours. Finally by 9pm my butt hurt so bad I had to pull into a rest stop and stand up for a few minutes. Around 10:30pm: I was getting tired and hungry, so I found a cheap motel with a Dennys nearby to call it a day.

The city I landed it is Henderson, a few hours short of my original destination (Charlotte). The water may have come out brown when I first turned on the shower here, and my server at Denny's was missing a decent amount of teeth, but this is all part of the adventure.

Denny's dinner

Questionable hotel, but comfy bed!

So day one of this cross country road trip has officially come and gone, tomorrow we start with a new "plan" and see where the day takes us... who knows, we might just end up in New Orleans!