The Moving Craziness Begins

I now finally have a signed lease in hand for my new apartment in Evanston, so the REAL moving insanity can begin. I was informed by the agent at the search company that the likely reason the management company was leery about giving me a lease with no co-signer is that they can't garnish fellowship funds. Nice. Anyway, aside from the sheer unpleasantness of the physical labor involved, I hate moving because of the insane number of details to be kept track of.

Unfortunately, I now have several fewer details to keep track of because my cat, a big, smarmy furball we call Marmalade, has been missing since Saturday. I haven't seen him since my ex was moving some of his stuff out via the sliding glass door to my apartment, so I can only assume that my ex carelessly shut Marmalade outside when he was done moving. Marmalade is NOT an outdoor cat and every time he has accidentally wound up in the great outdoors previously, he's behaved like he has acute agoraphobia. He just hides somewhere crouched on the ground, apparently frozen in terror. My current place backs up against a brushy and lightly wooded area in which we periodically see deer and other wildlife, so I am very uneasy that he got lost in there and may have encountered a bull 'coon or some other equally unpleasant denizen. I was pretty much hysterical for a couple hours when I realized he was gone, which was already many hours after the fact. We put up fliers and called the animal shelter with no luck so far. As of this writing, it is approaching 72 hours that he's been gone, so I don't feel very hopeful. We've had Marmalade since my daughter was in kindergarten, so I am sure she is pretty broke up over it as well, or will be once she is no longer in shock over it. I didn't think it was possible for my ex to be any further out of my good graces than he was already, but he found a way. I really hope he is safe somewhere, if he doesn't come back to us.

I still have a ton of things to plan and arrange for the move, and I am finding GTD really helpful in this. I have packing materials to assemble and actual packing to do. I have to make lists of things to keep, things to get rid of, and things to buy when I arrive in Chicago. I have to make arrangements to turn utilities off and on, and I have to do research to make sure I get the best deal on my phone and internet services. I have to get my daughter enrolled in a new high school. I need to file changes of address. I could go on and on and on, seriously. I know I would be a lot more stressed out if I didn't feel confident that I have written all this stuff down somewhere and it won't slip through the cracks. Yesterday, it was slipping away from me a little bit again and I was starting to stress, but I'm back on top of it again. I'm also organizing and de-crapifying a tremendous amount of stuff so that I don't end up moving junk I don't really want or need, or being unable to find the stuff I do want. The big move is scheduled for the weekend after Labor Day, since I think I would be insane at this point to try moving Labor Day weekend itself, to say nothing of the fact that September 1 falls right on Labor Day this year. I have a whole lot of things to do before then, but I've got 'em covered.