Getting Close

A little over a year after the wedding, hubby and I are finally going to take our honeymoon. Last year we were so busy with buying the new house, moving into an apartment, cleaning up the condo, selling it, then moving into the brand spankin' new house, Kelly losing his old job, interviewing for his new job, with a wedding in the middle there somewhere, that by the time we thought about a honeymoon, we stopped... took a deep breath... and decided to defer gratification and plan for a big trip this year. Yes, it's really me writing this, and yes, I know - deferred gratification is a very odd concept for us.

But, in our own style (okay, it's my style to have a big planning thing), we booked the thing in October of last year, and have been counting down months, then weeks, and now days. We leave this weekend for a lovely cruise around the Baltic, and I am about to go into packing panic mode. I'm not there yet because we only got the suitcases out of the closet on Monday, so I've only tripped over them twice. By the time I trip over them the 4th time - which should be Thursday around 10:30 am - it will occur to me that my Alpha suitcase is still empty, and I will panic.

From there, things will happen predictably and quickly. First, I will throw everything I own into the Alpha suitcase, which is huge. Then, there will be an "I Love Lucy" moment where I will attempt to close it by sitting on it, which will not work, even with the expando zipper expando'd. I'll open it up and take out what I believe are "lots of things," but in reality will be only one pair of socks. I will rearrange everything and try to close it again, again unsuccessfully.

The next step will be to take everything out and make piles. Don't know yet what the piling system will be. Sometimes I make piles by day (Monday's outfit, Tuesday's outfit). Sometimes it's piles by type of clothing (3 capris, 2 dresses, 4 tops). Once I did piles by color (red things, blue things). Regardless, the piling system will expose the flaws in what I have chosen to pack, and I will throw out over half of whatever is in each pile. This will then leave me with a lot of space, which I will fill up with unneeded shoes.

At that point, Kelly will say the magic words, "Don't forget, we're going to have them do laundry service for us," and, because those are magic words, all the right clothing items will find themselves in the bag, ready to do travel battle.

Which knitting projects to take along will be a far more difficult process. I don't even want to think about that right now, primarily because I'm leaning towards a pillow kit with acrylic yarn and plastic needles. It has the charm of being expendable if one of the security personnel decides to confiscate it. That's a great criteria for deciding which knitting to take, don't you think? Yeah, me neither.