That’s what we told ourselves as we spent 35+ hours trying to cram every bit of our belongings into the back of a 22′ moving truck that really needed to be a 26′ moving truck. It seemed like 22′ should be plenty big. Even Penske said it would be large enough for our apartment. They were wrong. I can’t believe how much we crammed into our little 2-bedroom Manhattan apartment. “What were we thinking?” was also a common refrain, as we tried to protect our furniture from the midnight rain that fell onto it, while it sat patiently in the street waiting to be loaded.

We pulled away at 5:15 am last Friday morning, exhausted after pulling two all-nighters while trying to fit said belongings into said too-small truck. Our overnight doorman was happy when we left him a desk and various other furniture pieces that didn’t make the cut.

We will never move ourselves again. If we have to sell blood, our first born, or a kidney, we will only use professional movers from now on. Larry will do it if only to not hear me scream about how all my furniture was gouged, scratched and dented along the way. I don’t believe one piece of furniture made it through whole.

My favorite part of the move came at about 3 am on the second night, as Larry decided to take 7 large plastic storage bins up the ramp backwards, lost their balance at the top, and the bins and all their contents rained down on our belongings sitting on the street below (save the bin that Larry managed to grab, luckily, as it contained a printer and DVD player). If the crash didn’t wake the block, the expletives flying out of my mouth did.

Finally pulling away, exhausted, dirty, and mentally deficient, we made it all the way to New Jersey before we had to pull over and sleep. The next few days brought more of the same. And now I know why they call it fly-over country. Nebraska was especially tedious. We finally made it to Utah at about 2 am on Monday morning, and loaded all of my (sob!) damaged furniture and other boxes into the storage unit on Monday evening. With the help of all of our brothers, parents and other family members the truck was empty in less than 2 hours. If only we had their help at the other end!

Now comes the fun part of trying to finish all our other loose ends before we take off on Monday. We received the keys to the Paris apartment yesterday. The key to the front gate is a little skeleton key. Even Parisian keys are charming. We still have too many details to attend to, so aren’t as excited as we should be, but once we board the plane the reality of what we are doing will hit us. I can’t wait.