On a lovely Friday evening, just before Harry Potter’s birthday, I left Boston.

I drove in from Rhode Island, weeping only periodically. I took the longer route just to give myself the treat of going over the Longfellow Bridge one last time. I probably almost caused an accident by craning around in my seat to freeze the image of the skyline into my memory. I picked up S and we went to Harvard Square, so I could get one last iced tea at Tealuxe and we could both get last cupcakes at Sweet. Everything in the stores was Harry Potter-themed, and there was a group of people playing Quidditch in the alley between the two halves of the Coop, and that was when we realized: It was Harry Potter’s birthday. I don’t remember Harvard Square always celebrating Harry Potter’s birthday in that way. I hope it becomes A Thing. I hope I come back to visit next year and there is Quidditch again in Harvard Square.

From Harvard Square, we went to pick up my work friend K in Charlestown, who was also making the drive with us. S had been waiting patiently for a delivery from UPS, which had been out for delivery that morning but had STILL not arrived, at 7 pm. We did one last check-in with L to make sure that the package hadn’t arrived (it hadn’t) and then followed the GPS…back through Harvard Square. Well. It was nice to get to say good-bye to it *again.*

We made excellent time that night from Massachusetts to Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. I drove the whole way, because the driving was so easy. No traffic, no yelling at stupid people (I generally had easy drives when I drove; K attracted all of the stupid people). We eventually got to Wilkes-Barre sometime around 11 and decided to stop at the Holiday Inn Express we saw there. I’d made no reservations, uncertain how far we would get the first night, and for the first time, in the crowded parking lot, we became concerned the hotel might be sold out. Who are all these people staying in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania? Anyway, we walked into the hotel, and I had this conversation with the man behind the front desk.

Me: Hi, do you have any rooms available tonight?
Him: Yes. (walks away)
Me: (stands, bewildered, at the front desk)

He eventually came back and told us the only room available was a smoking room. We were like, Hotels still have smoking rooms? Who are all these people who still smoke? We took the smoking room, which was on the fifth floor, thinking that it wouldn’t be bad, but it did smell a lot like smoke, answering our question: People staying in the Holiday Inn in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, still smoke. The hotel also did not have HGTV, so whatever to that hotel. We went to bed, exhausted.

In the morning, we were greeted by FREE BREAKFAST. Huzzah! The bacon was gross, as it seemed as if it was just crispy fat, but it was nice not to have to worry about where we were getting breakfast, and the people-watching was fantastic. (Who was staying in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania? Kids’ sports teams, apparently.)

After breakfast, we checked out and got back on the road. And we learned this: Pennsylvania is an incredibly boring state. At least where we were. It’s just so much longer than you think it should be. We were braced for the size of Southern states, but we had not mentally prepared ourselves for Pennsylvania. We were very tired of it very quickly.

K was playing a game I did not approve of that involved seeing how far we could go before being forced to get gas. Eventually, in the Middle of Nowhere, Pennsylvania (not its official name) (probably), she gave in and we stopped to get gas. While K pumped and I cleaned the windows, S went into the gas station to investigate snacking options. K and I finished up and got back in the car to wait for S, which was the point at which some stupid car decided that they had to use THIS PARTICULAR PUMP for their gas, none of the other empty pumps would do. So we moved the car and picked up S at the door to the store. S apologized for her delay, explaining that she had been learning all about the fact that the cashier’s grandson’s favorite show was Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. She also apparently learned something about Jesus in there, but when weren’t we learning about Jesus on this trip? We learned many, many things from many, many billboards along the way.

FINALLY we got to Maryland. K and I both lived in Maryland at various points in our lives, and it’s weird how, as soon as we crossed the state line, it felt recognizably like Maryland. And then, immediately, there was traffic. Yup, definitely Maryland. We were only in Maryland for ten miles, and we sat in traffic almost the whole time. Traffic that had not existed in Pennsylvania and vanished as soon as we reached West Virginia. We debated stopping to grab lunch somewhere, and then decided that maybe Maryland was manufacturing this traffic in order to coerce people into stopping and spending money in their state, so we refused to get food in Maryland on principle.

West Virginia was better than Maryland. It actually wasn’t bad at all. There was civilization around, as evidenced by there being a DUNKIN’ DONUTS. We moved over IMMEDIATELY when I saw that sign by the side of the road. We decided before stopping at Dunkin’ Donuts, we would have lunch. I suggested Popeye’s, saying that, in full disclosure, the biscuit was the best part about Popeye’s. We went to Popeye’s and parked next to a car from Rhode Island, which made me happy. Unfortunately, I was the only one who enjoyed my Popeye’s meal. K was dubious about the fact that she was given a spork (although she did agree the biscuit was good) and S likes neither chicken nor biscuits, so Popeye’s was perhaps not the best choice. Ah, well. Going to Popeye’s did allow us to see the random trailer home parked in the grass behind the Popeye’s parking lot, which I’ve got to admit was more like what I thought West Virginia would look like (I am a terrible New England elitist, I know).

After Popeye’s, we went to Dunkin’ Donuts. I ordered my usual iced tea, lemon, no sugar. I was told they were out of lemon. (K, afterwards: They’re across the street from a grocery store, they can’t go buy some lemons?) So I had it without lemon. K ordered an iced coffee. Then she decided that she wanted a hot cup to stick the iced coffee cup in. This, she claimed, would keep it from getting condensation all over my car. The guy clearly had no idea what she wanted the hot cup for, but he gave it to her. Then she fretted for a bit, while he was off making S’s orange Coolatta, until she came over to me. “This isn’t the size I wanted,” she whispered. “What?” I said. “It’s not the size hot cup I wanted,” she hissed. “I wanted a medium sized cup. Do you think I can lean over and grab one from the pile?” I sighed heavily and said to the guy, “Excuse me. Could she have a medium hot cup?” He seemed even more confused by her demands, but he fetched us a hot cup. Somehow, this exchange resulted in a flight of fancy on S’s part when we got back in the car that had me living in this parallel universe where I married the Dunkin’ Donuts guy and had to live in West Virginia and work in a refinery. (Why couldn’t we move to Boston? Why would I stop being a lawyer? These questions were never satisfactorily answered.)

We got out of West Virginia and settled into Virginia. Virginia is a very big state, but at least we were prepared for its size, unlike Pennsylvania. Virginia is also a very odd state. It has these things called “Safety Corridors” on portions of its highway. Apparently, the rest of Virginia’s highways are danger corridors, or something. In the Safety Corridors, according to the sign, traffic infractions would result in higher fines than criminal violations. All this tells me is that the Safety Corridors are the best place to commit any criminal violations you might be thinking of committing. In Virginia we had the first Epic Saga of a Police Car Who Refused to Go Above the Speed Limit and So Hovered with the Traffic and Forced All of Us to Go an Unacceptable Speed Limit Speed for Many Miles. I am a fast driver. This was immensely frustrating. Unfortunately, we were to have another of these Epic Sagas in Tennessee when K was driving. It didn’t get less frustrating, in case you were wondering.

We switched drivers, and I completely embarrassed K by waving at a Rhode Island car that we passed on the highway. I don’t know why this embarrassed her, I thought it was charming. Anyway, as I was no longer driving, I had time to look at the map. And that was when I realized something: We were going to cross time zones in Tennessee. I was no longer sure if the GPS ETA had accounted for us moving back an hour or not. If the GPS was smart enough to know we were crossing a time zone, then we were looking at an extra hour of driving that I know none of us had been expecting. I decided not to say anything about this fear of mine at that time, choosing not to diminish morale this way unless I felt I absolutely had to.

Eventually, estimating with the map and the time, I felt that I had to say something about the time zone issue. “There’s something I have to tell you,” I announced, solemnly. “I didn’t say anything earlier, because I didn’t want to say anything unless I had to, but I think we have an extra hour of driving ahead of us that we weren’t accounting for, because we’re about to go back an hour when we cross the time zone.” This announcement was met by silence in the car, as we all absorbed this news. But then we recovered. K came up with a crazy goal. K frequently comes up with goals while driving, apparently this is A Thing for her. Goals like, She wants to average 65 miles an hour, stuff like that. So K announced her goal: “My goal is that the next sign we see for Nashville will show it’s less than 100 miles away.” (Nashville was our target for a stopping point that day.) There was a moment of silence. “You realize that’s not a goal, right?” I said, finally. “That’s, like, a hope, maybe. But you have no control over what sign we see next, or how close we are to Nashville at the moment. That’s like me saying that my goal is that it doesn’t rain today. How can that be my goal? There’s nothing I can do to achieve that goal.” I don’t think K ever really understood what I was trying to say. All I know is that S suddenly got very quiet in the back seat of the car, until I eventually said, “What’s wrong?” and she replied, “I don’t want to ruin anyone’s goals, but…I just saw a sign for Nashville.” “Oh, no,” said K. “What did it say?” “177 miles,” S admitted after a second.

This was the lowest morale point of the entire trip. Not only had K’s “goal” not been met, but we had SO MUCH DISTANCE to go before reaching Nashville. Wilkes-Barre to Nashville is an energetic day’s drive. And it’s not like we stop a lot, we’d been driving and driving and driving for a while. Then, to make it worse, a storm was kicking up. We watched it in front of us, the towering clouds and the flashing lightning. I could remember Southern thunderstorms, and my “goal” was that K not have to drive through one, at night.

We made it to Nashville without any rain hitting, thank God, and we drove straight downtown, which was extremely busy on this Saturday night. So busy that we had a lot of trouble finding a hotel room. We eventually located one at the Holiday Inn at the airport. And it was–wait for it–a smoking room again. It was also on the fifth floor again. At some point, it was almost like we were just living the same day over and over.

It was 10 pm, and we hadn’t had dinner and were starving. Unfortunately, the hotel didn’t have room service. Well, its informational book claimed it had room service, and that you should tune into Channel 37 on the TV to see the menu, but when you turned on Channel 37, all you saw was the menu for a pizza delivery place. I am not a huge pizza fan because of the fact that they fed it to us all the time at work, but beggars can’t be choosers, so we gave up and ordered the pizza. And then I had to stay up an hour after eating, because my doctor told me that it upsets my stomach when I go to bed right after eating. Luckily, this hotel had HGTV, so I was able to watch Color Splash while I waited for my food to digest.

The following day we only had an eight-hour drive to get us into New Orleans. This meant we could spend the morning sightseeing in Nashville. We embarked from the hotel with the intention of grabbing breakfast downtown. We parked the car directly opposite the Hard Rock Cafe, in the middle of downtown, and went in search of a restaurant serving breakfast. And we searched. And we searched. Nashville has a lot of bars, but apparently its populace is usually so busy sleeping off the night before that they have no need for breakfast. It was so very hot and I could feel myself starting to feel sick as I got more and more dehydrated. We were in desperate need of water, but we couldn’t even find a Starbucks to duck into. There was nothing.

Eventually, we took a break by ducking into the one souvenir store that was open, just because it happened to be air-conditioned. This turned out to be one of the world’s awesomest souvenir stores. They had the most random stuff in there, like magnets for every state in the union (I bought the Rhode Island one). And a huge variety of salt-and-pepper shakers, including ones shaped like kangaroos and stamped “Nashville.” Is Nashville known for its kangaroos? They had a lot of amazing Elvis Presley Christmas ornaments, and then, randomly, a lot of “I Love Lucy” merchandise. They also had a lot of really useful things, like a cheeseboard in the shape of a piano. I mean, if you’re going to buy a chunk of wood in the shape of piano, at least it should have a hidden compartment for you to store your cheese knives, right?

When we reluctantly left the souvenir store, we ran into a man dressed as a clown making balloon animals. This is a totally true story. We said we were desperate to eat breakfast somewhere. Apparently, there is only one place in downtown Nashville to eat breakfast. He directed us to it. I do not remember the name of the restaurant. I do remember that the waiter was way too happy and energetic to suit my hot and exhausted mood. We drank a LOT of water, and I got myself to eat a little bit, even though I didn’t feel like it. I’ve realized that I lose my appetite if I don’t keep myself hydrated. It’s kind of annoying.

Once we were done with breakfast, we decided it was too hot to do much more sightseeing, so we headed back to the car. On the way, though, we couldn’t resist darting into a store to try on some cowboy boots. This was a lot of fun, but we just couldn’t see ourselves as cowboy boot type of people, and cowboy boots are super-expensive! We paused at the Hard Rock Cafe so I could buy my father a T-shirt (I buy him one everywhere I go) and then we got back in the car and decided to do some car sightseeing.

There were only two places we really wanted to see: the Grand Ole Opry, because everyone kept asking us if we were going there, and the Parthenon, because it was so delightfully random. (Yes, Nashville has a replica of the Parthenon in one of its parks.) On the way to the Parthenon, we passed a Dunkin’ Donuts, so, after going to the Parthenon (pretty much what it says on the tin. And still hot out), we stopped in the Dunkin’ Donuts on the way back.

This Dunkin’ Donuts was a little bit of an adventure. When we got up to the cash register, I had this conversation with the cashier:

Me: Can I have a medium iced tea, lemon, no sugar?
Cashier (in disbelief): You want your iced tea unsweetened?
Me: Unsweetened, yes.

She gave me my iced tea…and two packets of lemon juice. I am slowly reaching the conclusion that Southerners don’t really put lemon in their iced tea, do they?

Whatever, we got out to the car (where I took a photo of my two packets of lemon juice, because it cracked me up), I took my first sip of iced tea…and it was sweetened. Now, I cannot drink sweetened iced tea, I find it gross. So, rather than throw the entire cup away, I drove *back* to the Dunkin’ Donuts and went back into the place.

The woman in front of me in line was being kind of annoying. “Do you have any special doughnuts? How much is a doughnut? What doughnut would you recommend?” OMG IT IS NOT HAUTE CUISINE. But eventually I got waited on and I explained, again, that I wanted unsweetened iced tea. They gave me a replacement iced tea, and this time it was unsweetened.

From there we went to the Grand Ole Opry. I admit I didn’t really get what I was supposed to be being impressed by at the Grand Ole Opry. I kept asking who are the people who perform at the Grand Ole Opry. And why is it evoking “opera”? It looks like it’s a big venue, and it’s in a major complex, with a lot of shopping and restaurants and a riverboat, but it was way too hot to get out of the car. Mainly we drove through construction. The most notable thing about the trip was that the speed limit there was 24 miles per hour. Yup, 24. It wasn’t a typo, either, it was on many, many signs.

So then we left Nashville. Tennessee had one last delightful interlude for us, though. We stopped to fill up the gas tank and use the bathroom. The ladies’ room at the gas station was out of order, so we all used the men’s room. The men’s room was gross. I was warned by K that it smelled, so I was trying to hold my breath and/or breathe out of my mouth the whole time I was in there. And I was amazed because it had one of those “Guess Your Weight!” scales that you put money in and, well, I don’t know what happens because I’ve never spent the money to find out. But I was like, “Who is thinking that, hey, it seems like a good idea to spend more time in this bathroom?”

After all these musings of mine in the bathroom, I went to leave…and I couldn’t get out. The lock thing was, like, stuck. So I had a moment of panic, thinking that I was trapped in this disgusting men’s room somewhere in Tennessee. I was probably “trapped” for, like, five seconds before I got the lock to jiggle out. BUT STILL. IT WAS FIVE SECONDS TOO LONG.

We joyfully left Tennessee behind for Alabama. A lady talking on her cell phone almost killed us by veering into our lane without looking. ALWAYS CHECK YOUR BLIND SPOTS, PEOPLE. ALWAYS. This brush with death, a random space rocket by the side of the road, and a river combined to make Alabama initially much more interesting than we had been expecting. (Yes, we had reached the point in the trip where a bridge over a river becomes exciting.) But then, eventually, Alabama became extremely boring. We were waiting to get to Birmingham, where we thought we might hit suburbs or something, but Birmingham was an enormously disappointing city, very tiny with a few moderately tall buildings. “I wish something interesting would happen,” S requested. At my alarm, she amended, “Something interesting and not dangerous.” But it was too late. Something interesting arrived in the form of one of those violent Southern rainstorms where you can’t see anything and you have to go, like, ten miles an hour with your flashers on and hope nobody in front of you stops and that everybody behind you sees you. Driving in Southern rain was where I learned to appreciate how much easier it is to drive in a snowstorm, trust me.

We made it through the rainstorm, however, and then we came to a fascinating highway sign telling us that the next exit would bring us to Kimberly Morris. This was no doubt two towns, Kimberly and Morris. However, it sounds like somebody’s name, which sent us off on flights of fancy. What if you were named Kimberly Morris and you saw that sign? Wouldn’t it be irresistible to you to get off at that exit? And then what waits for you off that exit? Probably nothing good, we decided, because the novel was more interesting that way. And a hot Alabaman sheriff, because isn’t that always the way? The name of the novel would be “Never Get Off the Highway in Alabama.”

From Alabama, we entered Mississippi. And here is where we began to realize that, compared to Mississippi, Alabama is the most interesting state to drive through ever. Mississippi is so boring. At one point I became convinced we were just driving the same stretch of road over and over, passing the same cars, in a relentless loop that we would never be able to escape. Everything looked exactly the same. We passed one parcel of land that indicated it was for sale and debated who would buy this random patch of land on the side of a Mississippi highway. It just seemed hilarious to us, the idea of calling those people up. “Hello, we just drove by your parcel of land, how much do you want for it?” Mississippi made us laugh at stuff like this, we felt like we were going out of our minds. K was convinced that a certain decal on somebody’s truck was a “dancing patriotic devil.” Yes, that was her description. (It turned out to be a deer.) Strange things happened, like all-terrain vehicles randomly crossing the highway, and a car parked in the breakdown lane FACING THE WRONG DIRECTION. How do you even manage that? We were out of range of any McDonald’s (I didn’t even think that was possible in America) so eventually we stopped at a rest area, just to have something to do. (We chose one of the rest areas that indicated it had security. Mississippi has lots of rest areas whose signs says “No Security.” Clearly, much like Virginia’s Safety Corridors, this is where you go if you are a criminal.) We hit another storm, and that livened things up a bit.

K set herself another goal: that we would be out of Mississippi before nightfall. Well, it was a very near thing. With four miles to go, the sun had basically set. There was still red streaking the sky, and as long as we got into Louisiana while the sky was still pink, I thought we would win. Those four miles were the longest four miles of the day. I have no idea why they took so long to drive, but they took FOREVER. K was going some unbelievable speed in her quest to beat the night and we STILL just kept driving and driving in Mississippi. That is clearly how “Never Get Off the Highway in Alabama” ends, with a mad dash down an endless-seeming highway to beat the approach of the night that brings demons. Or something.

Eventually, we made it to Louisiana, we achieved our goal, and we were now so close to New Orleans.

And then we hit the traffic. Fierce, terrible, barely-moving traffic. Apparently, somebody in Louisiana thought it would be a good idea not to close just one lane of the highway but to close two lanes of the highway. The GPS earned every penny of its worth by telling us to get off the highway early, taking us a different way to avoid the absurd traffic. Unfortunately, this alternative route took us by the SCARY ABANDONED SIX FLAGS THEME PARK. I had been looking for blogs about New Orleans earlier in the week, and when you look for blogs about New Orleans the results are generally depressing things about Katrina. I came across one that was a video of Six Flags New Orleans, which was closed for Katrina and never reopened. I don’t like abandoned places, they freak me out, and the abandoned theme park was no exception. The video said that it was scheduled to be torn down, and the video was pretty old, so when we saw the exit sign indicating that Six Flags was coming up, I said, “Oh! I saw a video about that Six Flags! It’s been torn down–OH MY GOD IT’S STILL THERE.” Because there in front of us loomed a dark, huge, spooky roller coaster. IT WAS TERRIFYING.

So that was my welcome back to New Orleans: traffic and a nightmare-inducing abandoned theme park.

Next time: My welcome back continues along roughly the same nightmare-inducing roller coaster path.

The lease signed–somewhat dubiously–I turned my attention to the million-and-one balls that must be juggled in order to coordinate a move. I move a lot. I don’t know why. It just seems to be my life. It’s not like I enjoy it, but I guess I’ve never learned the art of staying in one place, which in some cases is more of an art than moving around is. So I’ve done this a lot, and I’m pretty good, I think, at remembering all the things that have to happen: utilities in both places, and forwarding of mail, and changing addresses at banks and credit cards and magazines.

What I have also learned from moving a lot is that no matter how much you do ahead of time, the last couple of days before a move are going to be hell. So I resolved not to kill myself trying to pack a lot ahead of time. I had the month of July entirely off, and I spent it relishing all the things about my life that were about to change. We had my kind of July in New England. There was one day the whole month that I didn’t get up and immediately put my bathing suit on. I spent a lot of time lounging around with my sisters and parents and grandmother and nephew and whatever random neighbors and relatives happened to stop by to use the swimming pool. I know many families scatter all over the place. My family is pretty much located in Rhode Island. I am considered highly unusual for having moved away, and it was nice for us to all be in one place for a long period of time, hanging out with each other and enjoying each other, before I move even farther away. I had a picture-perfect month, with lots of swimming and good food and periodic breaks to go back to Boston to see my friends there. Whenever I was in Boston, I packed a few boxes, and then otherwise ignored the packing. My plan was to do all the packing in the Friday, Saturday, and Sunday before the movers arrived on Monday.

This was actually a decent plan. The only problem was that the weekend coincided with intense triple-degree heat in Boston. Boston has hot summers, but triple digits are unusual. It was extremely hot and it was extremely humid and my apartment didn’t have air conditioning. I think I accidentally gave myself heatstroke. God knows I felt terrible. I ended up dragging myself out of bed one night around 6 a.m. and dozing a couple more hours on the loveseat on my porch (my porch was accessible only by my apartment, so this was totally safe). It was much cooler outside the house than it was inside the house, so after every box I packed I would go outside to get some air and drink some water. Yes. I was going outside into triple-digit heat to cool down from my house. It wasn’t the best timing, this heatwave. I love heat, but I love laying by the pool in it, not packing!

Anyway, S and L were totally awesome and came over on Sunday night, after the weather had broken, to finish up the packing. S is way better at packing than I am. I suffer from a lack of spatial thinking. I am TERRIBLE at gauging the size of things. I just can’t do it. I am awful at imagining how furniture will fit in a room, or guessing how much food will fit in a given container, or figuring out how things could fit in boxes in the most efficient manner. So S corrected all my mispacked boxes and we taped many of them up, until we figured out that the entire city of Cambridge was apparently out of packing tape. Ah, well.

I stayed at S and L’s house on Sunday night, as my house was entirely packed up. The cable company was coming between 8 and 11, so I got up at 7 and left their house at 7:30. I stopped at Dunkin’ Donuts to get iced tea and a chocolate glazed doughnut, and then I went to my house. The cable guy got there at 9, which meant I lost my Internet access. Meanwhile, the movers weren’t supposed to get there until 10. The movers finally showed up at 11. A full hour late.

Everything in my house was packed except for the kitchen, which I was paying for them to pack (I consider this so worth it; china is such a pain to pack properly, especially for a long journey). There were three guys, and somehow they took FOREVER. I have a decent amount of stuff for a single person, but it’s not like I’m a hoarder or anything. I’m just a person who has lived 31 years and has acquired some stuff as a result, including some fairly standard furniture. Nice furniture, but it’s not like they’re rare antiques or anything, they’re all mass-produced pieces. These people were, like, befuddled by them. I was trying not to micro-manage, but it was seriously ridiculous, how long they were taking.

To make things worse, my landlady had decided that she needed to be there during the move. This meant I had to make awkward small talk with her for HOURS. And, when I wasn’t making awkward small talk with her, she was just in my way. The moving company told me that they couldn’t transport liquids, a problem because I had 15 bottles of wine in my house (I said nothing about all the bathroom liquids I’d already packed into boxes…), so I began to carry the wine out to my car, dodging around the landlady, who was just milling about. And then, at one point, the realtor who’d rented me the Boston apartment randomly showed up because apparently the landlady had scheduled a meeting in my apartment on the day I was moving out. They were like, “Can we use your couch?” and the movers were like, “No, we’re moving this couch.” I was like, ???? Who tries to schedule business meetings in the middle of someone else’s moving day? So strange.

I have this armoire that I bought at Pottery Barn years ago. I love this armoire, but it’s not like it’s the world’s most unique piece of furniture or anything. It took the movers over an hour just to move this armoire out of the building, and when they were done it looked as if a war had happened. Seriously, there were huge holes in the walls, all the way down the stairwell. I’ve never seen anything like this. I was like, “Uh, you have to pay for this…” And they agreed but also said it was impossible to move the armoire without doing that. I was like, “Well, it moved in without this kind of damage.” There was damage when they moved the armoire in, but it was nothing like this. It looked like an action movie had filmed in there. (Incidentally, I would have used the movers who had moved me last time, except their quote was literally four times what everybody else’s quotes were. I guess that’s because they’re competent…).

The movers ended up not leaving until 8 pm. By then it was pouring, and I hadn’t eaten anything since 7:30 that morning, and I was starving and exhausted and just wanted to get in my car, and the landlady wanted to do a check of the apartment. I guess this was nice, because it confirmed that there was no damage, except for the damage in the stairwell, which she said she would pay out of my security deposit unless I could get the moving company to pay for it. Which they said they would, so I wasn’t overly concerned about that issue.

I finally got in my car at 8:30 and drove to the one drive-through fast-food restaurant I could think of in the Boston area. I almost never eat fast food, but I was STARVING and had no other options. I ended up trying to eat it while also driving on Boston’s narrow highways in the pouring rain. Possibly not the safest drive of my life. But whatever. I eventually made it back to my parents’ house at around 10 p.m., and then I collapsed. LITTLE DID I KNOW THAT WOULD BE THE EASIEST PART OF THE MOVE.

I had a stupid week gap between when I had to leave my Boston apartment and when I could get into the New Orleans apartment. This was due to the absurdity of the landlords on both ends. The New Orleans apartment was available earlier, and I offered to pay to get in earlier, but they didn’t get back to me until after I’d already booked all of my arrangements to not be there until August 1. I asked my landlady if I could move out of my Boston apartment a couple of days later, to try to get rid of this gap, but she told me no, because she wanted to have a couple of days to clean the apartment before the next tenants moved in. Fine. Except that she told me later that the new tenants weren’t moving in until August 8. So I could have moved out much later. Her: “Yeah, it sounds like moving out earlier was really inconvenient for you. Sorry about that.” …

Anyway, I wasn’t leaving to drive down to New Orleans until Friday night, so I spent the week in Rhode Island doing things like getting pedicures and having all the Rhode Island foods and experiences I would soon be denied (doughboys by the beach, etc.).

Next Time: I drive through many states.

First, thank you SO MUCH to all of you who participated in this contest! The response was overwhelming, and I’m so very flattered and honored! And I’ve enjoyed reading all of your comments!

I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m terrible at running contests because I want EVERYONE to win. Anyway, names have been picked out of a hat, and the three winners are:

Glory
Claire
Suze

Congratulations!

The winners will be receiving an e-mail from me shortly!

As for the rest of you who entered, because I don’t want you to be empty-handed, you will get a treat in the e-mail from me shortly.

And…Happy Autumnal Equinox!

We are approaching the autumnal equinox, which is the extremely meaningful birthday of Selkie Stewart. Want to know why it’s meaningful? Well, you have to read the book to find out! For a sneak peek at “Will o’ the Wisp,” tell me what your favorite (or least favorite!) thing about autumn is in a reply to this blog, and I’ll enter your name in a random drawing to be one of three lucky readers to receive the current draft of the novel in the eBook file format of your choice (all copyright laws, of course, apply, and the draft is not for further distribution without my express permission; I’m a lawyer, you know I’ll be all over that stuff!).

Really, really, really want to be the one that wins? Poke around in the forum. You get an entry for every post you make in a forum thread here between now and midnight Eastern on September 23, 2011, when I’ll announce the winners!

It is no secret that I adore Boston. It wasn’t always this way. I mean, I always loved Boston, but it wasn’t until I moved away that I realized how much it truly fits me. In my isolated little world, I had assumed that Boston was pretty much like every place else, and that every place else would be a bit like Boston. I knew there would be differences, but I was unprepared for the size of those differences, for the chasm between a place like Boston and a place like New Orleans. This is not to say that one is better than the other, merely to say that they appeal to different people. I think Boston is the best place in the universe, but I readily acknowledge that it is the best place in the universe only for a very particular type of person, which I happen to be. And I didn’t know any of that until the first time I moved to New Orleans.

So now I find, strangely, that I am moving back to New Orleans. This is the way life works, in these odd, random spurts. The first time I lived in New Orleans, I admit I didn’t do too well. There is A LOT of culture shock between New Orleans and Boston. I am trying to do better this time around. I am trying to appreciate New Orleans for what it is. And, I figure, people can learn from the mistakes I make in trying to adjust to a totally different lifestyle.

The first step of any move is to find an apartment. I just looked for an apartment in Boston last year, so I know from experience that, in Boston, you can get three or four new pages of Craigslist postings every twenty minutes. Looking for an apartment was an endless feast to wade through. Granted, most of them I dismissed, but still, choices for renting in Boston are wide and disparate.

In New Orleans, I was lucky if Craigslist saw three or four new postings a week. It was frustrating and began to be nervewracking as the house-hunting weekend approached. I am extraordinarily picky, and I was worried that I wouldn’t find anything that was acceptable to me.

So I was already nervous about the search, which was not helped when the flights down to New Orleans were utter chaos. My parents were flying out of Providence, I was flying out of Boston, and we were meeting in Newark for the flight down to New Orleans. First, the people in Boston gave me my mother’s boarding pass instead of my own (crack security!) and then my parents’ flight out of Providence was canceled altogether, so that they weren’t flying in until Saturday morning. This was when it all came crashing back to me, how utterly terrible it is to get to New Orleans from New England. It’s so much easier to get to Europe. I think there is one direct flight between Boston and New Orleans. I plan to pay whatever price that airline is demanding, because I cannot go through this terrible pattern of delays and cancellations every time I fly home. So I was feeling very lonely and depressed and I got off the plane at something like 1 a.m. (hours later than I was supposed to get in), which was really 2 a.m. my time, and I got the car and I got lost getting on the highway (you know, I have to say, people always complain about signage in Boston, but signage is pretty terrible in most places. Las Vegas has good signage. And New York City is pretty good, but mostly because their streets go in order). I got to the hotel finally nearing 3 a.m. my time and every single credit card I had–AND my debit card–all got declined. I was like, “????” Because I had plenty of available credit AND enough money in my account. The hotel let me check in anyway, and, at 3 a.m., I was sitting on my hotel room bed calling my bank and my credit card companies, all of which said that there were no issues and the transaction went through. Three times. Sigh. I decided against dealing with it then and went to bed.

I only slept a few hours before waking up and going downstairs. I went to the front desk to figure out what was going on. They were bewildered and said the transactions went through and they don’t know why I was told the cards were declined. Apparently that was just a fun little prank. So we straightened out the charges and then I treated myself to a nice breakfast in the elegant dining room of the hotel before going to pick my parents up at the airport, and from there we went straight to the realtor’s office.

I’d had a list of the places I wanted to see. They were all already rented. Apparently, according to my realtor, New Orleans is, like, the only place in the country not going through a housing recession. She said apartments are being rented immediately, that you have to pounce right on them as soon as they become available. This didn’t seem to bode well to me. The places she took me to were all ENORMOUS but hadn’t been renovated since the 1960s. This is one thing if you are buying a house and can make it your own, another thing entirely when it’s an apartment you’re only living in for a couple of years. I was like, “I don’t need all this space. I need something much smaller, with nicer finishes.” She said I needed to spend more money. So I threw my budget out the window. Whatever, I will skimp and save and eat out a lot less, but it’s worth it for me to have an oven that’s not rusted through. Even with the budget increase, I still only found one place that really fit all my needs, and even that I wasn’t overly crazy about, but whatever, it was the best I was going to find, so I said I would take it. This necessitated driving to Rite-Aid and buying four money orders with my debit card because they wouldn’t accept personal check.

Relieved that we’d found a place, we spent the rest of our time in New Orleans pretty much lounging by the pool before going home.

On Monday, my realtor called to say my offer had been accepted and they would send me the lease. Days went by. On Thursday, I e-mailed my realtor to be like, “??? Is there a problem? Where’s the lease?” “No problem,” she assured me. “You’ll get the lease any day now.”

They FINALLY sent the lease on the night of July 4. This was annoying, because I was done with work, meaning that it was no longer as easy for me as it once had been to print and scan and fax things. I printed out the lease and became immediately suspicious upon glancing over the first paragraph. My rent had been quoted to me as one price, but the rent in the lease was $100 higher, saying that I would get a $100 “discount” if I paid by the first of the month. Now, I’ve never not paid my rent on time, so this should never be an issue, but still, I felt deceived, like they were trying to defraud me in some way. Suspicious, I sat and read the entire lease. It had a bunch of provisions about how I would have to pay for trash collection and stuff. I was like, “???” So I e-mailed my realtor, to be like, “Look at all these sketchy things.” She told me it was totally common in New Orleans to pull this trick with the rent. I continue to think that’s sketchy beyond belief. She also said that the only utility I have to pay for is electricity, that the lease was a standard lease that hadn’t been adjusted to the circumstances of my condo community. I was like, “It took a week to fill my name into a blank on a form lease?” Well, I said it nicer than that. I also pointed out that the lease said I can’t put anything on the wall, using any method. I’ve seen the no-nails clause in a lease before and always ignored it, but this lease specifically said I couldn’t use the sticker-mount things that I thought were specifically supposed to be for people who were renting. My realtor said this was also fairly common to have in a lease and that those sticker-mount things harm the walls. Well. Who knew? Especially since they’re specifically advertised as not harming walls.

I decided to let them get away with all their sketchiness, chiefly because I did not think I’d be able to find another acceptable apartment, and e-mailed back on Tuesday–the day after I received the lease–to ask if I could start the lease a couple of days early, because they’d told me the apartment was available earlier. I said that I would be happy to pay a pro-rated part of the rent in exchange. This should have been a no-brainer: The apartment’s sitting empty, let me move in and you can make some extra money. Except these people didn’t even ANSWER me. Finally, I gave up that they would ever respond to me and said, “Whatever, forget about starting the lease early, I’ll just send it back to you as is.” And they wrote back, “Thanks. We need it as soon as possible, we’re waiting on it to finalize another transaction.” You take one full week to send me a form lease and then three days to NOT answer the single question I had, and then you’re going to try to pretend thatI’m the one dragging my feet? Whatever. To get them the lease, I ended up driving through rainstorms so severe that the post office was closed when I got there due to flooding. But I got them the lease, and the first step in my major move–finding the apartment–was done. Finally.

I wrote more than 150,000 words between the middle of August and the end of January. So I was giving myself a break from writing the last novel of the original trilogy, especially after the blistering pace at which I wrote Fortuna’s story (Fortuna’s story is 60,000 words, written in the span of a month that included two major holidays and a vacation). The novel will come when it comes, I told myself. And so I just relaxed. I did things like writing up motor tours from eight months ago, and laying lazily about my house watching television. And then a strange turn of events happened.

During my lazy television-watching, I started watching US “Being Human,” mostly because it’s set in Boston but I ended up really enjoying it much more than I thought I would. Last week’s episode included both the Psychedelic Furs’ version of “The Ghost in You” and Matthew Puckett’s interpretation of the same song (which isn’t on YouTube, so fail there).

And this is how it starts for me, always. Everything I write has a theme song, a song that I play over and over again, letting scenes flicker before my eyes and dialogue echo through my brain. As they say in “The Fantasticks,” you wonder how these things begin. Well, for me, they begin like this.

I knew as soon as I fell for the song, on Friday night, that I would start writing again soon. I downloaded both versions and set them on constant repeat. And I thought. I thought and thought and thought. I re-read some previous scenes in the trilogy. I played the songs again, during the football portions of the Super Bowl. I thought and thought and thought some more.

The thoughts were vague. I have no real sense of the plot, other than what the eventual resolution is going to be, and ideas for some images that need to occur throughout the novel. I tried out beginning lines, trying to find a way back into the story, back into the narrator’s head, but I’ve been trying them out for a while now, trying to find the one that sounds right.

And then I’m sitting here, during the Super Bowl, and it hits me suddenly. Oh, I think. You know why I can’t settle on an opening line? Because it opens on a different point of view. It opens on a fairy tale.

And there it is. Sometimes, writing a book is a little like one of those brain teasers, the ones that are two pieces of metal twisted together, and you find exactly the right angle, and they fall away, one in each hand.

You wonder how these things begin. Sometimes, it’s a US remake of a British show you loved, and a night in front of a football game you’re only watching for the commercials. And then you realize that it begins, as all stories begin, once upon a time.

In the six weeks that I have had this website, I have received 330 spam comments. Some of these are dull, but many of them are vastly entertaining. Below, I have excerpted the Best of the Best:

“Your internet is superb.” (Why, thank you! I happily take credit for the entire Internet! It is superb!)

“What an ideal web-site.” (Not just a great website, an *ideal* website. People should really just stop making websites now, I have attained the pinnacle of the medium.)

“You really make it seem so easy with your presentation but I find this topic to be really something which I think I would never understand. It seems too complicated and very broad for me. I am looking forward for your next post, I will try to get the hang of it!” (A comment on my FAQ page. Maybe, if you are this flummoxed by an FAQ page, you should put down the mouse and take a step away from the computer. Just a thought.)

“Personal home decorating hint of the week is this: Don’t crowd a home.” (Actually, I just thought this is good advice, so I’m sharing it with all of you.)

“Great article, I Just Love Hello Kitty BTW!!!” (Good for you! Everybody needs a passion!)

“It’s so lucky for me to find your!” (This one intrigues me. This could be the love of my life, so lucky to find me, except for the fact that, instead of “you,” he wrote “your.” MY WHAT? WHAT IS HE LUCKY TO FIND? I feel this may be one of the unanswerable questions of the universe.)

“Where else could I get this kind of information written in such an incite full way?” (I like to interpret this comment as finding my writing riot-causing.)

“you mad freak! That’s brilliant!” (Thanks!)

“Way over my head! Who wants to see a Dummies Guide to this stuff? lol” (A comment to my Calendar page. I kind of *would* want to see a “Dummies Guide” to a calendar.)

“What is the most important thing that happened to you today?” (Getting this comment.)

“I don’t have any words to appreciate this.” (I wish this had been on the excerpt of the novel. Alas, it was on the Calendar. There are a lot of people out there really floored by the idea of a calendar.)

“There are plenty people that experience what you go through daily. I can honestly say that I am one of those people. With luck more people find your blog.” (How do they know what I go through daily?!)

“I cherished what you have performed here. The theme is classy, your prepared written content stylish.” (This is my favorite. If this website were a book, I’d have this as a blurb on the back.)

“It is also possible to detect early stages of hair loss through palm reading.” (Aren’t there better ways to detect early stages of hair loss? Like, through hair loss?)

“If they were to fly med-long haul again, what should be the ideal network ?” (NBC?)

“Captivating, I passed this on to a friend of mine, and he actually bought me lunch because I found this for him, so let me rephrase: Thanks for lunch.” (You’re welcome!)

“Am I able to use paypal to pay for this?” (I will accept money through any method.)