Pack Up Your Troubles.

We are going away on holidays next week, and I am just about at the point of organizing myself for my holidays that, if anyone told me it was all called off and I didn't have to go, I'd be altogether thrilled.
Not that I don't want to go on holidays, it's just that I don't want to get ready to go on holidays. Its so much work to get yourself organized to go on holidays that you need a holiday when you are done. Which works out well.

This year the Loudshoes family are veering wildly from our usual plans of a week up at a cottage on Lake Huron. (The cottage was sold last winter, and we don't know the new owners and they would probably charge us considerably more for the use of their dwelling than a couple of haircuts and a really good loaf of homemade soda bread.)
This year, we are going to Europe; specifically, Ireland, France and England. For two weeks, not one, which is stretching my organizational abilities to their max.

The girls are beside themselves excited, and the Mister is totally thrilled and I am trying hard not to think of this as more than a shitload of work and worry.
My father asked if I was getting excited for our trip and I said that I was beginning to have dreams about missing planes and forgetting passports and losing luggage, so yes, I think I am.

I'm always this way before a trip, trying to plan for every eventuality and driving myself absolutley crazy with all the possible disasters that I have to avert. ("Umbrellas in case it rains! Bandaids and moleskin for blisters! Immodium in case of diarhhea! Anti-venom for snakebites! Sunscreen! Rubber bands! An axe!" I have to remind myself we are going to London and Paris, not Mumbai and Mount Everest.)
I guess I come by it honestly; when my father's mother came to Canada to visit us from Ireland in 1967, she brought her own tea, because she was afraid we wouldn't have any good stuff here.

I have to tell myself that no matter what I pack, I will take lots of things I wish I hadn't, and I will forget to bring something so vital, so necessary, that I will wonder if I had been smoking crack while I was packing. One time we went to the cottage and I forgot to pack sheets for the beds.....all of them. And another time, I sent Thing 2 to summer camp with no underwear and no pajamas.

We are also visiting the west coast of Ireland, where my father comes from. We will be staying in the house my grandparents built, where my dad grew up and where my parents lived when they first got married. I love that house and west Kerry, and I'm really pumped to show it to my kids.

Currently, here in southwestern Ontario, the weather is stupid hot. It has been over 30°C for over a week now, and on Thursday, it was 35°, which is ridiculous. I have been keeping and eye on the weather, and in Dingle, where we will be going, it is 16°C and drizzly. (Says my father, "I could have told you that; it's always 16 and drizzly. April, August, November, February, 16 and drizzly.") With the heat and drought here, the beaches of West Kerry never looked so inviting.

This really will be a trip of a lifetime; the girls are at a terrific age to be going overseas, and I'm thrilled to be able to go to Paris, however briefly.

I just hope I pack enough tea.