Ready, Steady

We leave in two days to do, well, rather a lot of traveling. We've known about this for almost two years, and we've been talking about it nearly every day for almost two years. And now -- it's upon us. It's been the classic "hurry up and wait" scenario, and now we're in the "just hurry up, already" phase.

We're grateful and happy and excited, but don't be fooled... this is a lot of work. Our fancy-free days (if we ever had them) are over. We're traveling the world with children in tow. True, our girls are very well-traveled and likeable in general. But for a large part of this trip, we'll be traveling with someone else's children in tow -- 40 of them. This could get interesting.

Secondly, while we're leaving home for five months with only one medium-sized suitcase each, we're not just tossing stuff in a backpack and heading out for adventure. The preparations to leave are requiring logistical plans the likes of which are truly interesting to watch (less so to actually participate in). I feel like I'm planning a wedding and moving house and having a baby simultaneously. I've hired someone to come in and deep clean the house -- this is just so I can spend every waking minute (and as we're sleeping only about four hours a night this week, there are a lot of waking minutes) doing all the other jobs I can't hire out. My blinds have never -- never! -- been so clean and I could almost weep with gratitude... sure hope the couple who's renting our house while we're away feels the same way! While Emily cleans, I'm rushing around the house like a whirling dervish, separating and sorting and packing and labeling and moving to the basement and going to DI. I'm working from an unprecedented number of lists.

I've wanted to move for so long that it seems cruel somehow to basically be moving... without the benefit of moving. But I guess a five-month-long free trip to Australia and Europe is a pretty close second in the It's a Good Life lineup. I'll take it... but I may be comatose the first week or so while I recover from the "ready, set, go" part.