Two days to go

The movers have been and gone, leaving us with a mostly empty apartment that, thanks to its 30-foot ceiling, now has more reverb than a Slowdive performance.

The movers did a great job of getting all our belongings out of here and into the storage pod. In hindsight it would have been insane for us to try to shift all the stuff along the corridor, down four floors in the lift, out to Alicia's SUV and then to the pod, as it would have taken about 50 trips and possibly end in a couple of gory murders.

Now the apartment is mostly empty I've been sweeping and sweeping the beautiful wood plastic laminate floors in a desperate attempt to clean up the billions of Erebus hairs that cover every square nanomillimetre of the place. The brown paper bag next to Cadbury is full of floor sweepings as well as the four tennis balls we found under the sofa. I think I'm safe in saying that we could have knitted another Erebus from all the hairs I swept up when we took the bed apart.

Cleaning day is tomorrow, although we aren't going to kill ourselves in an attempt to make the place 100% perfect as it's impossible to get it to the ridiculous standard the apartment complex says we should. Like all SoCal apartment dwellers, we basically kissed our deposit goodbye the minute we signed the lease back in 2018. Our apartment inspection is scheduled for Thursday morning — just to add an extra edge to the day that we embark on a 3,000-mile drive — so it'll be interesting seeing what bullshit things they come up with in an attempt to get even more money out of us.

We said a fond farewell to the sofa, which I bought when I moved to the US in 2004. It's currently having the holiday of a lifetime in a dumpster. We kept the cushions just so we would have something to sit on, so I'm currently perched three inches off the ground typing this while glancing around for errant dog hairs. Erebus has claimed the dog bed and yes, the dogs do have a stormtrooper helmet for a water bowl.

We were going to take the IKEA bed with us to use in the spare room when we buy a house, but after struggling to take it apart last night we basically said "sod it" and got rid of it. This means we're sleeping on a mattress on the floor for the next couple of nights. It's not as bad as it sounds, and at least I'm in no danger of falling out every time Cadbury uses my back to stretch against.

Talking of Cadbury, all this change has left him a bit out of sorts as he's a bundle of adorable anxiety at the best of times. This is his fourth move with me since 2014 and if he thinks his life is weird now, he's going to be in for a ton of fun over the next week. I picked up a prescription of Xanax from the vet so at least that'll take the edge off his nerves while we tootle across the country.

And as if I needed another incentive to move to Vermont, here's a pic of my new Outback. Nice.