"The best laid plans of mice and men go awry" - Robert Burns

We knew this move would be difficult, logistically, emotionally, physically, etc.
We planned everything to the nth degree to reduce the difficulty and stress involved.
What we could not plan on was every plan coming with its own additional complications.

In this last month, we've become side-questing experts:

• Needing to get our cat certified by a vet and health certification sent to USDA for approved
  • This must be done in the final 10 days before flying out, but a physical certificate must be sent to you
  • USDA was backlogged during government shutdown
  • 4 different vets cancelling on us on the day of appointment
  • This pushed our entire timeline for flying out back, which pushed out flight into holiday pricing territory, raising the cost of our flight by over an additional $1,000
• We need to ship out our belongings
  • The shipping company had been generally unresponsive, and not receptive to our questions
  • The shipping company required us to palletize our belongings ourselves since the Portland dock which would normally do so had closed
  • We tried SEVERAL different businesses to obtain pallets and finally found a B2B company that was willing to do us a favor and sell us some
  • We were going to pick these pallets up real quick the morning of our 10th anniversary only for...
  • The shipping company reaches back out to us to notify us only 2 days before we were supposed to be shipping out all of our belongings that our pallets have to be heat treated
  • The place we were going to pick the pallets up from sent us the wrong address, so we ended up far from where we needed to be only minutes before they were to close during rush hour
  • On calling, we discovered that these pallets would not have been heat treated
  • In frustration, we started working with another shipping company, and combined with the vet issue, we pushed back our move date from Nov. 16 to Nov. 24
  • Not my recommended way to spend your 10th anniversary, in case you were wondering
  • New shipping company also ends up having terrible communication, constantly shifting the goal post on us
    • No lithium-ion on ship
    • No lithium-ion on plane
    • No lithium-polymer on either
    • No perfumes on plane
    • All of these were communicated days apart. Also, how do items with batteries normally get shipped if plane and ship are both a no-go?
  • Movers show up sooner than planned - we were not finished packing, and as a result, not all of the belongings we'd intended to pack went with them
• We need to sell our car
  • Title goes missing
  • Price offered from dealership is magically lower than it was when we first got it estimated
  • We were unable to get a rental car that morning, so we were unable to sell the car. Speaking of...
• We need a rental car
  • We live next to the airport, so we decided to try to use a car rental from there. DO NOT RECOMMEND
  • They will not take debit, only credit
    • My credit cards were still being sent to my family's address, so I stopped bothering with making use of when once it expired, and thusly didn't have a physical card
  • I work with the bank to get the card activated without me having the physical card in-hand
  • Added the card to Google Wallet
    • Which also proved difficult in that my Fairphone does not support Google Wallet, so my card, my phone's bank app, Emily's Google Wallet
  • Go back to car rental and ask if they'll take tap-to-pay
    • Apple Pay, but not Google Wallet
    • Will not manually enter the card, demand physical card
    • That would take 2 weeks to arrive and we are 3 days from flying out
  • Turns out this is a policy across all of the airport car rentals, so we will instead need to try for a rental first thing in the morning now that we've lost an entire day that we needed to work on clearing out the apartment
• We're still selling belongings on Facebook Marketplace and I don't even need to elaborate on how difficult scheduling those can be

Despite all of the challenges, we are making it happen, and we have been able to adjust to accommodate each challenge, but I'd be lying if I didn't say it's been an exhausting journey to get here and I will be breathing the biggest sigh of relief once we are up in the air.

A note for our loved ones, we apologize we haven't been more available in the last couple weeks to say our farewells, we are not avoiding anyone and are genuinely trying to spend as much time with everyone as we possibly can, but we hope that the above sheds some light on why it's been very difficult for us to plan some meetups. Seeing you all means so very much to us and trust me when I say it saddens us just as much as it does you to not be able to see everyone prior to the move.

Thank you, everyone, for your incredible support and encouragement, and we're looking forward to these adventures ahead of us. Thank you for tagging along with us via this little corner on the internet of ours!