Falling From Elle...or Grace?

Monday was spent packing indoors as it was raining all day. Luckily I left the car top bag open so water could get in and allow for whatever I packed in there to become wet. Today Karen and I spent the morning doing a marathon packing job of cramming everything into Elle [the name of my car...Elle the Explorer] that would fit. It was like one huge Tetris puzzle (a game which I love btw...).

I had to pay a price to move everything on my own. I left behind cleaning supplies, plastic food containers and garbage cans as well as the foam pad that tops my mattress to make it feel all cloud like and comfy. The hardest part was letting go of my wine glass set from Ikea. But there was no room in the car. I know it's just stuff, but it's my stuff and it's all the stuff I have. It's not like money to replace these things grows on trees. They weren't even all that expensive, it just hurt to let them go. I didn't prepare myself for the high cost of trying to move by myself without my parents' extra space in their vehicle. [And don't even mention the word Uhal b/c they wouldn't rent a trailer to my more than capable vehicle...] Amongst all the other loss and letting go I was doing, the glasses just became the straw that broke the camel's back.

Anyway, back to the point of this post. So Karen and I were packing the car and shoving things in left and right, up/down, through windows, beneath the matress, etc. The grass was wet and I had taken off my Chaco sandals for better gripping power on the car. Standing with one foot on the boxes in the car and one foot on the frame of the door I was trying to shove bags of curtains and sheets into the front left corner of the rooftop bag. The next thing I know, I'm on the ground on my back with boxes falling out of the car onto my right leg. Got some pretty nice bruises and cuts that will take at least a week to heal (right on top of my shin bone...oww). The amazing part is that the grass was really soft, I didn't break any bones or bruise my back/organs and I didn't even get the wind knocked out of me. About 15 mins. later after Karen pulled the boxes off, I realized what happened and she helped me up, I was up on top of the car packing more. Nothing like getting right back on the horse.

In the end, the car was packed full to the top, I stopped into the office to return a pie plate and pass on some more things that wouldn't fit in the car (and truthfully didn't need), turned in my keys to the house and church (which, as I predicted, was the hardest thing I had to do all year), said a few more goodbyes and then walked out the door. We made a few stops to drop off a bag at Goodwill and then headed out Rt. 2, down through Wenatchee and Ellensburg and onto I-90 where we continued out of the state into MT. Sadly, we breezed through ID in the dark. Driving was easy (apart from the windy roads in ID where I cheated in the lanes on turns b/c I could and it was late and we were going a bit fast). We buzzed along until we were just too tired to focus and spent the night in Missoula, MT. We settled into a slightly pricy, but probably the cheapest place we could find, that resembled a lodge inside. It was cozy enough even though the beds were a bit stiff, but they did have cable so I got to check the weather and get a tiny dose of my Food Network addiction.

Stay tuned for the next day's journey back to MN!