Over the River and Through the Woods.

I'm taking the girls to visit my folks in Florida next week, and I am in the midst of the pre-vacation frenzy that is known as "Prolly Days". (You know, "I should prolly take that sweater. I should prolly get American cash. I should prolly cancel the paper.")

It occurs to me that taking a week's holidays takes up two other weeks of your life as well...the week before is Prolly Days, and the week after is Holiday Hangover, when you have to re-enter your life and take care of all the stuff you missed while you were away. Somehow, only 7 days away can feel like you have been time-travelling and you are not quite synced with your real life and you have to fake it for a few days while you try to assimilate all the changes that have happened while you left; like who's out on America's Next Top Model, and the house across the street still has their recycling bins out. It can be very disconcerting.

I went to the bank yesterday and got American money, and hallelujah, the Canadian dollar is at par! There was a time when it cost us $1.60, if you can believe it, to buy an American buck. Now it's like there's a huge, America-sized sale on, and we don't have to pay HST!
I also got our health insurance, $60 for the three of us for a week, because there's no way I'm taking the chance that one of us will need a kidney transplant while we're there and have no way to pay for it.

I also had to buy new yoga pants for the plane, because flying in jeans is all kinds of uncomfortable. Thank God for yoga pants, even though I only did one yoga class in my entire life and I had a very hard time not falling asleep during it. (I was afraid that if I did fall asleep, I would drool like a St. Bernard and then do that jerking thing where you dream you're falling off a cliff. Doing that in public earns you no friends.)

I also got a crossword puzzle book, a few new books for my Kobo, and because I am a tiny bit OCD, a real, live book, just in case the Kobo conks out on me and I am left with nothing to read for two hours. (Can you imagine? The horror. Even my kids don't want that to happen, and they LIKE talking to me.)

I've topped up our phone minutes, written lists of what to pack, remembered the GPS, printed off maps of where we need to go, hired rental cars, rented a hotel room for one night and confirmed tickets and that we all have passports. Thank God the Mister is staying here and I don't have to deal with turning things off, setting lights on timers, locking the garage door or finding a babysitter for Toby.

I'll be so exhausted from organizing our holidays, I might be too tired to actually go on our holidays.