I'm here! I'm finally here!

"Welcome to Texas". Mom and I finally saw this sign-me from the driver's seat of my humongous rental truck, and she from the driver's seat of my tiny car-after a day and a half of rough, boring driving from STL. We started out of her driveway at 9:30 on Monday and finally arrived at my apartment parking lot at 4:15 Tuesday afternoon. We were locked out, of course, so the first stop was to the apartment office a couple of miles away to sign my lease, sign a huge check for the deposit and a couple of months rent, and get the keys to my new house.
The trip was so long and so exhausting. We intended to stop in Ardmore, OK, but just before Oklahoma City, after about 10 hours on the road, Mom couldn't do it anymore. I was running on adrenaline and nerves and hadn't slept right for a couple of nights, and knew that my judgement was horribly clouded, so I didn't fight for her to go any further. We stayed in a roadside Super 8 and had dinner at a Cracker Barrel across the highway overpass. We went back to the room quickly, worried that the cats might be fighting, or worse, and crashed almost immediately. I was rattled and jangly, and slept fitfully, for a total of about 2 hours. The funniest thing was that the cats were scared and hiding under the edges of the covers, as low as they could physically be, until the lights went out. As soon as it was dark they became little explorers.
In the morning they were upset to discover that they had to go back in the boxes and back into the car for another full day of driving. We stopped in Ft. Worth at noon and had lunch with Esther. She was so patient as I struggled to make conversation, even though my brain was in Austin, and in St. Louis, and everywhere in between. The cats were probably grateful for the movement to stop for a little while (we think Blu may have had a little motion sickness-he wanted to be on the floor as much as possible). There was no way to explain when it was over, though, when we stepped in to my new place and started bringing things in from the truck, and my car, and Ikea (!!) so they didn't really believe that we were here to stay until Thursday or so. Now, they don't like the neighbors footsteps as they walk past the door, but they seem to have forgotten their long-distance traumatic experience. Pray for me the next time the boxes come out, though. Seriously.