Horrible thoughts

It just occurred to me the other night that I might NOT have fun. I've pretty much been dancing and singing this trip to my family for the past four years. I've been the ultimate sales rep, painting glorious mind pictures for them all of the utopia we will experience through travel. Then, the other night as I am drifting off, I had this awful thought: what if I don't like it? I mean, what if, after four years of planning and, let's face it, obsessing over this trip, we get there and I don't like it? It could happen. It doesn't help that my close colleagues have been teasing me about starting up a betting pool on when we'll return. At least, I think they're teasing. My husband figures if they have started one, all the early dates are already taken. Of course, we could just come home. But come home to what? Our house is rented out. How depressing.

Meanwhile, we have successfully stuffed all of our belongings into our attic space, the furniture into the garage space and whatever else was left we dumped on relatives, friends or the local dumpster. We are presently living in a shell. Once all the furniture was out, we realized just how dreadful our walls look. Did we really make all those marks and dings? I figured we just HAD to clean the drapes and managed to shrink them. No, no, not shrink them, shrink parts of them so the bottom of the drapes is about one foot shorter on each end than in the middle. Maybe the new tenants won't notice. Or maybe they are now going to check the drapes.

little things

Its little things that mark time as we approach take off. Things like the last phone bill, the cancellation of your TV cable, car insurance reminders that you can safely ignore, heart palpitations.

Holly discovered that flight prices drop around this time every year. This year her prediction came true and prices dropped yet again, right on schedule. Go Holly! We used some coupons from our local grocery store to save $200 per ticket. I was saving up my grocery points for a new Corvette but this does save us money now so I guess its OK.

I finished the storage cocoon. It's big. I hope we don't get a big snow this winter, I am worried about the snow load of the roof. (if you are our renters, this is a joke).

Sold a few more things on Craigslist. You meet the most random people on C/L. If anyone is looking to buy any old, useless, heavy, large items please contact me.

metaphysical europe turns into reality

A few weeks ago the penny dropped that I was to go to Europe for a year. I knew I was going, but I didn't really think it would happen. Something would come up to interrupt the trip in some way, say a heart attack (I went to the doctor, no luck). Interestingly the biggest job wasn't raising the money (considerable) or getting time off work, (they had no problem letting me go, in fact my supervisor signed the form kinda quick??).

The biggest chore is packing up all your belongings.

I started slowly, letting Holly move stuff around, getting rid of a few pairs of socks, recycling a few old magazines. Then it hit me. I have ten years of stuff in my house. A simple Garage sale wasn't going to cut it. I started lending out my tools, I started giving stuff away, I ruthlessly started throwing stuff out. Barely a dent. Thinning out the LPs wasn't going to make any differrence, I needed a new bold strategy, I knew exactly what I had to do... Hide stuff.

I have spent the last four days building a stuff cocoon in the attic. I will report later percentage of stuff that actually fits into it (the hidden stuff quotient). Holly has lined up useless stuff for the attic but right now the priority is my collection of 1966 Chevelle parts. Her stuff may be subject to one of my previous strategies.

Packing is theraputic.
Packing is theraputic.
Packing is theraputic.

Traveling Tom style

Note I brought shoes and pants. And thank goodness I brought garbage bags!

You can't take it with you...can you?

So, how does one fit a 3000 squ ft house into a 28 litre bag? This continues to baffle me for several reasons. First, what exactly is 28 litres? I buy the 4 litre jug of milk at the grocery store but I hadn’t actually planned to fill the bag with milk. And how does one measure the liquid volume? Hopefully, they didn’t use my bag.

Second, for an educator, this is like a critical thinking dream question. Tom wants to take nothing, believing we can buy it if we need it. I have more of an extreme planner approach. It is like a puzzle to me. Kind of like that game where you are going to live on an island and you can only take three things or whatever. Do you take the matches…or the curling iron?

Just what IS essential to one’s survival in Europe? How many pairs of underwear does one need? There is something a wee bit disconcerting about having only one pair with you but would it be overkill to pack seven pairs? And what about pants? I mean, how many days can you wear the same pair before you just can’t stand the thought of donning them one more time? My daughter rarely makes it through the day in the same pants. With my son, I have to pry the filthy pants off him to wash them each week. I might be able to find a satisfactory medium there somewhere but don’t get me started on shoes…

What about a reading light so I can read early in the morning without waking everyone up? What about the purse size Tide to remove spots so we don’t look like the great unwashed? If you think that isn't essential, you haven't eaten with my family. What about eating? Are spices essential? Only if you want flavour. What about Band-Aids? Advil? Who can travel without THAT? And I hate to sound vain, but let’s face it, one’s make-up needs increase with age and honestly, I think I do those around me a great service by applying it. On the other hand, I’m not certain my son knows what a hairbrush is… Actually, that could work in my favour. There could be quite a bit of extra space in his bag.

Welcome to the Blog

In seven weeks we'll leave on a one year tour of Europe. This has been four years in the making so it's not like we're unprepared. Two summers ago we practiced traveling together to see what it was like. We spent three and a half weeks driving through the province of British Columbia. Okay, I know that isn't exactly a whole year but it is hard to practice when you only have a certain number of holidays. And for those of you who know me, yes, I am a teacher-librarian and I get my whole summer off but my husband doesn't, so there.

As I was saying, we practiced. It wasn't a complete waste of time. I learned some valuable information:

1. Circus performers and dancers (mostly from the cast of STOMP) love to travel and apparently book rooms above and beside ours.

2. My children are a delight to take to a restaurant...for the first 20 minutes. We present a loving family unit if we can get in, order, eat and get out before the first half hour has expired.

3. My husband gets rather grumpy after 2 weeks of celibacy.

4. I am a delight to travel with. The rest of them can get on your nerves.