Scot and the terrible rotten no good day

All right, if you are not in the mood to read about someone's bad day, skip this post!

Before I tell you about yesterday, let me say this: the most important thing, nay, the only important thing, is that no one was hurt.
OK, so a little back story: Jeff and I have the keys to the new house and are planning on spending all of June packing, moving and cleaning the old place. We are under lease until the end of July. We told our landlords that we would, of course, honor the lease, but since Jeff has been here over twelve years, if they wanted to spruce the place up, throw on a new coat of paint and get a jump on University students returning in the Fall, we would be happy to be out by the end of June.
Our Landlady, without giving us a for sure yes on the early out, said they'd like to look at the apartment to see what needed to be done. Could this happen next week?
Now, normally, I'd say, No, like every other landlord on planet Earth, you can wait until we vacate. But, because we want something from them, I'm being good.
However, this means spending this week moving AND getting the place in reasonable shape for a viewing. And I should tell you, Jeff has some weird landlord issues, which I believe stem from childhood poverty.
Anyway. So, yesterday, I got down to the basement in the morning. I have a huge plastic tub of books and whatnot. I sort through it, purging about half of it. Saying goodbye to some old friends. At the bottom of the tote (Which is the size of a small bathtub!) are several copies of "The Stranger" containing articles of mine. I fill the now empty space with pillows. Oh, also, I kept a couple of original "Polyester" scratch n sniff cards.
Upstairs, Jeff hasn't been so good about purging. I understand that sometimes it's hard to let go of things. And I don't press the issue. If we have to move a box of junk, so be it.
Jeff is going to duck out mid morning. There is a thrift shop he goes to that was having a blow out sale and needed some cheap jeans to garden in. I stay and continue to box up the kitchen and bring things downstairs.
He called at one point and said he'd run into an old friend at the thrift shop and was going to give her a ride home and probably stay for a cup of tea.
Well, the long and the short of it was that he was gone for over three hours. But, I couldn't deal with that. Our apartment seemed to be getting more chaotic not less.
Jeff finally gets home, we pack up the Volare. The big tote goes on top and off we go to the new place.
En route, our dog, Pullo, who has not been handling the change of routine very well, sees a dog while we are at a red light and just goes ballistic. He's on my lap in full snarl and thrash. And thank god I didn't have a tire iron handy.
We get the dog calmed down and hop on 99. A mile or so south of Downtown, we hear a crunch. We don't see anything. At the next opportunity, we pull over and YIKES, the big tote is gone. Victim of a broken bungee.
We loop back, terrified of what we'd find. We were able to spot it. Thank god it was far enough over to be out of traffic. We go through downtown and head back. There's no shoulder and it is much too close to an exit to safely stop. And really, nothing in that tub was worth risking a life for. Like I said, I'm just thankful no one was hurt.
And really, I hadn't looked in that box for a couple years. And I can't even remember all that I put in there except the articles and the scratch n sniff. Relics of the past.
But, part of me felt deflated. Like the remnants of a life I once had were dumped, nothing but litter.
But. Nothing to do about it. Just gotta go forward.