A moving story, Part 5

(Part 1 here.)
(Part 2 here.)
(Part 3 here.)
(Part 4 here.)

Oh, and I think I forgot to mention, on his way out, The Guy told me he wasn't sure when they'd be able to deliver my stuff, but the Saturday morning we'd originally talked about was most likely not going to work for him.
We'd figure it out, he said.
Thanks, The Guy.

Obviously, at this point, BTG and I were too tired to do much. So we went to my grandmother's apartment for a quick nap and a shower, and then jumped right into the part of the plan you may remember from Part 1:

... go out to dinner with two of my close friends, BTG and I would crash at their house, and we'd hit the road bright and early Saturday morning.

Well, sort of.
We did go out to dinner with my friends (we'll call them D&D), and then out for drinks, because we needed them, badly. We did crash at their house. And then, bright and early Saturday morning, there was still all this crap to deal with.
Luckily, I have the best friends in the universe.
D&D and kay bailey and her husband sprang into action. One of the Ds helped with cleaning. All of them ran errands for me in the morning, taking stuff to Goodwill and returning the famous cable box. BTG helped me sort through boxes and boxes of stuff that I had essentially just been moving around for a decade or so because it was easier (well, more immediately easier) than sorting through it. She will, I feel sure, get into what was in some of those boxes in the comments, but suffice it to say that there were coupons for pizza places in my current hometown, which I last lived in more than eight years ago. And I threw out a lot. I got willing to get rid of a lot of stuff I had intended to keep, but there was Just. No. Way.
And this piece of the moving process is so much longer than I am making it seem here, but it is also boring, so you must understand me when I say we woke up at D&D's at about 7:30 Saturday morning, were at my apartment a little after 8 a.m., and started moving stuff into the parking lot around 9:30 at night.
Here is the best thing about BTG as a moving buddy: She is more patient than anyone I have ever met.
Here is the second best thing about BTG as a moving buddy: She is a brilliant master of fitting things into a car, puzzle-style.
Here is the worst thing about BTG as a moving buddy: She has chronic back problems.
Yes.
Chronic back problems.
It is very good that I let her have the bed and slept on the couch myself at D&D's.
So I took everything that was still in my apartment and put it in the parking lot, prioritizing as I went: "It is very important that this get to New England. It is not at all important that this get to New England. This is less important than this, but more important than that."
BTG and her bad back stood by patiently in the dark and then put almost everything I brought out into the car. Amazingly. Incredibly. Beautifully.
I finished cleaning my house.
And at midnight, sixteen hours after we'd meant to hit the road, when I had decided that I actually was totally willing to just throw my vacuum cleaner away if it meant we could get out of there one second sooner, we left my old apartment behind and started driving. We drove for two hours, to a less-than-spectacular motel in Maryland, and if I'd had any idea how close we were to Delaware, I would have kept driving.
We slept until about eight minutes before our checkout time, at which point I put my dirty clothes back on (because, remember, my clean clothes were all in the truck) and got out of there.
BTG's family was having dinner in Providence, R.I. We figured we could make it. What else did we have to do?
And make it we did, exhausted and (in my case) filthy. They were lovely. There was lots of hugging and sizing me up. I stood firm in the foyer, refusing drinks and nourishment and insisting I had to get to the town my parents live in before I was too tired to drive. As it happens, they know that town quite well, and were quick to talk about who we knew in common, including two people who'd recently died, including the local dentist who'd died in a very unfortunate tractor accident.
I did finally hit the road and made the rest of the trip on my own, without incident. D&D called me with a map in front of them, eager to chart my trip and see how near where I was going would be to where I'd been.
I stayed with my parents, shopped at the local discount stores for a mini-wardrobe, started my new job and closed on my house. Eventually, The Guy got around to telling me when the movers could deliver my stuff; it wasn't an ideal time, but it was convenient enough, especially since my mother was available to help me supervise. Life was glorious.
Until the movers came.