the dirty little move II

Betsy and I hit the road for North Platte yesterday--three hours, 10 minutes, strong winds and $100 of ethanol (it's cheaper here than regular b/c of the subsidies--Betsy's never had it so good, I reckon). My mother followed along in her car, and once in NP, we spent the day driving around, talking to realtors, looking at houses (mostly from the outside), and getting discouraged. Finally, we went to an 5:45 appointment I'd made that afternoon to see a duplex, not expecting much. The first one we looked at was pretty nice--but the second, exactly the same except it had beautiful hardwood floors, was the one I wanted. It was far-and-away nicer and in better condition than anything we'd looked at that day: central air, the aforementioned hardwood floors, a dishwasher, a washer and dryer, two bedrooms, a nice tree and some bushes out front, and the possibility of a dog-friend. "Judy," I says to the landlady, "Judy, I'd like to take this place. What's your application process like?" "Well," she says, "I've had good luck with attorneys. Just come down to my business tomorrow and we'll sign the papers." She was amazingly nice, and agreed to let us unload Betsy and sleep there that very night, giving us the one key she had.

So off Mom and I went to celebratory big fat greek salads and a rendezvous with the local ginormous grocery, SunMart (it's amazing how even in smallish towns in Nebraska the grocery stores look like they're prepared for visiting armies, maybe of Sun-Martians). Then we stopped at my future office to pick up Betsy, where my also-extremely-nice colleague AMcM volunteered to help us unload her! And once we got to my new place, two neighbors, James and Clayton, just showed up and insisted on helping too! A job that would have taken my mother and me four hours at least took one instead. Then we got to stand around and drink Coors Lite outside, which tasted delicious and, I was told, there was even no need for worry that the cops were going to bust us. I guess we were on "my" property the whole time anyway, but still, it's not something I'm used to doing.

My mother and I put together some of the furniture, unpacked a few necessary boxes, ate some ice cream and called it a night. This morning, I returned Betsy to her rightful owners, got some keys made, signed the lease, had the utilities switched to my name, and we took off for our state's capital. I have training in Omaha, Lincoln, and Grand Island all next week, so I won't actually be back in NP till next weekend sometime. But in the meantime, I am free of Betsy and so is my stuff, and all is well. Yesterday ended so much better than it began, it's almost hard to believe it was all just one day.

And so ends the dirty little move, at least the moving part of it. The rest of it, we'll just have to see.

. . .


p.s. The first half of the DLM really was dirty, because between Erik and I, we packed so efficiently that I had to go commando from NY to NE. It was a nice change of pace, though. Underwear might be overrated.