"and a Bike" almost wasn't

As of yesterday afternoon, all but one of my countdowns are at the less-than-one-week mark.

T-14 hours until the movers are supposed to be here.
T-3 days until Ruthie gets to officially claim she's unemployed.
T-4 days until I'm done with work in the US.
T-5.5 days until we're boarding a plane.
T-14 days until I start my new job with the Aussies.

Tonight finds me fretting.  Fretting is not my style.  But tonight, for some reason, here I am, fretting away.  I think I have built up tomorrow as a huge milestone for some reason, so I'm making a bigger deal out of the movers coming than it might actually be.  Tonight Ruthie asked me if I'm fretting about the movers specifically, or the move in general.  I think the answer is both?  However, I also feel like once the movers come and go tomorrow, it'll be mostly smooth sailing until we're outta here.  Sure, there will still be lots to do in order to finish packing our stuff and getting the house ready to rent, but I am less worked up about that for whatever reason.

I think I must have asked Ruthie if we are ready for tomorrow about a dozen times today.  We've made an inventory, I've photographed everything we're having them move [except for the furniture and the motorcycle], and I have my task list of things to do last-minute style before the movers get here [empty one of the dressers, clear off the TV table, drain and clean the motorcycle], but I still feel like something's missing...

In other news, Ruthie has once again worked her magic.  As we were getting closer and closer to the 18th, I was starting to get more and more nervous about not being able to find out exactly what to do with the motorcycle once we got there.  I never changed my pipes; I couldn't find anyone [contacted people who are in-country and theoretically in the know b/c they have done it recently - no response] or anything [nothing clear on website after website] to tell me if I had to register my motorcycle or get it inspected; and Ruthie's research was starting to indicate we might have to pay thousands of dollars if we did have to get in inspected and registered.  At that point, I started to think it might not be worth it just for a "nice-to-have".  Then, late one night last week, she called the Victoria motor vehicles department and worked her voodoo on some Aussie named Greg.  This guy not only managed to help Ruthie in finding out answers by asking his supervisors and the policy department, he apologized for putting Ruthie on hold, and then created a loophole in the system.  Said loophole allows me to get a piece of paper enabling me to drive an unregistered motorcycle for the year I'm there sans inspection and at a fraction of the cost of if we would have had do all the normal vehicular stuff that the Australians do.  *whew*  What a relief.

-EP