Older and.....Wiser?

Doug stayed up til midnight last night packing product. He's...um...a perfectionist? So he's very careful about packing everything well so that it arrives in a state to be displayed. Much more careful than I am. :}

While he did that I did my best to tackle the mess in the kitchen. In a few minutes I'll drag the vacuum out and see if I can get the floors tidied and then mop the kitchen floor down.

I now understand very well my mother's flapping around cleaning just before we set off on a trip. I now understand that she couldn't face the thought of returning to the mess!

The last few trips I've not pushed and pushed myself to do more, get just one more warp woven, wet finish one last load, squeeze one more thing in before departure. Do you think I'm finally gaining wisdom? Or just too old to expend the energy being frantic????

Today I had a short list of things I wanted/needed to get done and after sleeping in (thanks to Doug leaving quietly at 6:30 am for work) I managed to get everything done then came home for lunch. I've got a large pot of home made soup in the fridge so I had some of that for lunch and will have it again for supper. We'll freeze what ever is left for when we get home.

We still have to pack our personal items and load the van. Doug gets off work at 4 pm and we'll see if he needs a pick-me-up nap or if we get that done before full dark. Departure will be around 6 am tomorrow morning with load in between 6 and 9 pm tomorrow night. Wednesday we have all day to set up, which ought not take us more than 3 or 4 hours. Once that's done we can rest up for the killer hours - 10 am-10pm Thur/Fri/Sat, with the show closing at 5 pm Sunday. It takes us about 2 hours to pack up and out. We'll leave Vancouver as early as we can manage Monday morning, perhaps waiting until 9 am to miss the worst of the rush hour traffic, and be home late Monday evening.

Ah, the glamourous life of the wandering craftsperson!

I'm bringing a bunch of books with me. Don't know how much time I'll have to read - certainly the 9 hour trip will give me some reading time - and since the due date is rapidly coming up on some of them I really want to read them over the next week.

Currently reading Sara Paretsky's Body Work with the following in the queue:

Dancing for Degas by Kathryn Wagner
Bad Boy by Peter Robinson (17th in the series, I think)
Duel at Dawn by Amir Alexander (sub-title: Heroes, martyrs, and the rise of modern mathematics - told you I seem to enjoy weird science!) :)

I will leave at home No Humans Involved by Kelley Armstrong and Strange Brew, a collection of short stories. I also bought a compendium of novels by Kelley Armstrong because they had it for cheap at Costco. That will likely go with me in January. I like to bring a bunch of paperbacks that I can leave in airports or at my hostess's house as I finish them.

In addition to that I think I'll bring my Project notebook and get some of my recent thoughts about that on paper.

On the health front (TMI, no doubt!) I've decided I can't tolerate the metal plate in my ankle so I've talked to the surgeon's receptionist and will phone in February when I get home from Florida for an appointment to discuss having it removed and how long it will take to get that done. Initially I thought it would be fine but the last month it's been really bugging me. Talking to others who have had the same thing, the reports seem to be that you reach a state when it's just not all right any more so my experience is not uncommon, and probably why the surgeon made such a firm assurance that if it bothered me he'd take it out. :)

I'm hoping that by the time I hit my next birthday my health issues will all have been dealt with and I'll be good for another 20 years. One lives in hope........... :^)