That’s pretty much the first thing all of our friends and family said to us when we told them we would be moving to NYC. And after that, the most popular was: “I’m so jealous!” or “What an adventure that will be!” or “That is so awesome!” And it was going to be an awesome adventure. I knew that. But the reality of the move was really hard for me to grasp. It was completely overwhelming to think about, and I was so sad/scared/excited/intimidated by the whole thing, depending on the hour you asked, that I just stuck with my ostrich act and only pretended to understand how our lives were about to change.

I told my office first, just because my position was one that I knew was crucial to the success of the company and I knew they would need a while to find my replacement. It was funny how fast word got out around the office, and how surprised everyone was (Me, too, friends! Me, too!). I told them my last day would be December 5th, which would give me a few days of not-working to finish packing the house for our December 10th departure date. David told his job he was leaving about 2 weeks before we were set to leave, as to not rock the boat too too much there.

At the end of November, David got a message from his new hiring manager that they really wanted him to be in the office in NYC the week of December 8th. Which would mean that he would need to go up without me for a week and we would be delayed in leaving for an extra week. (Hallelujah!) Little did I know, I would need every minute of every hour of every day of that extra week to actually get our lives in order to leave Austin. Totally a God thing. (God Thing #123, if I really told you the ENTIRE story here. He was working on this for a LONG time before either of us knew anything about a job at Google in NYC.)

Google had offered a very generous moving package, which included temporary housing so we had a place to stay while we found a permanent apartment. So, what that meant was that I had to sort our lives into 4 piles: things we would need for the first 60 days, things we would need to live in (what could be a 500 sq ft apartment in) NYC, things we were sentimentally attached to that we wanted to keep in storage in Austin for when we have our next real house, and things to donate/trash. I say “I” had to sort these things out, only because I am a control freak of the highest order, and I was convinced that David would throw out something we needed or that I was attached to (for some probably ridiculous reason). I took ALL of this on, and it almost cost me my sanity, although my ostrich-ing probably made it more of a chore than it could have been. We opted for POD for storage, so as I sorted, David packed things in there. Here is a picture of his genius tie down system for attempting to keep things some-what in place for when it was moved back to the POD storage place.

What is in those boxes? Anyone’s guess. And, yes, I am quite sure I will need those lampshades whenever we might have our next real house (in Texas??). Blame it on the ostrich.

Needless to say, it was quite a chore, and when our realtor was pushing for us to go ahead and put the house on the market before we left, I had to put my foot down and refuse. (Probably not in the most polite manner, either, but I wasn’t budging on this, no matter what.) I was still working full time and trying to sort through things and figure out what to keep/what to move – it was all too much. And to add having to keep the house spotless for showings at random intervals AND the thought of having to keep Nelly in her kennel all day every day IN CASE someone wanted to see the house, was just not going to work. I knew that we had the cutest house in our neighborhood and that it would not be hard to sell (even during the holidays). I just had a feeling that we wouldn’t have any trouble (God Thing #124). I won that argument. And the house ended up selling in 24 hours, for a profit. Bam.