Saturday, August 16, 2008

Vacation Preparation

[Any of you who have wandered over here from The Well-Trained Mind forum: just type "fridge" into the search bar at the top left and you will find what you are looking for.]

After nagging my husband into joining us at the pool this afternoon, I began feeling seriously unwell. So, I left him there. (Good thing we came in 2 vans). I'm sure Larry thinks I lured him to the pool with the intention of leaving him alone with the 4 youngest while I went home and took a nap.

It was a great (3-hour) nap, though. I don't know what hit me. Maybe an entire summer's worth of sunscreen and swim towels and Italian ices, all at once. And I just had to lie down.

We are leaving on Monday for a whole week, which means I need to spend all day tomorrow cooking and freezing dinners, doing laundry, and planning which knitting I need to bring. This last is a very involved process that necessitates itemizing all the yarn I own, perusing all my available patterns (including free ones on the Web), and (quite possibly) making a few trips to Michaels and to the bookstore to pick up more yarn, or patterns, or the right-size needles (which I have but can't find).

And then there is the trip to Target for more underwear. And some envelopes for the books I am finally going to mail. (If you click on that last link, you can still sign up for this week's Bloggy Book Club giveaway.) And some treats to bribe the kids with in the car. And icepacks for the cooler. And...

Actually, I bet there will be 2 trips to Target. I am not the most organized person in the world.

Oh, and then I have to clean the whole house, because heaven forbid we all die on the road...

24 comments:

  1. Surely you can count on Anna's help?!

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  2. Actually, yes - because she isn't going (she's staying with a friend and going with her family to the beach), and she doesn't want me to change my mind about that.

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  3. Aw, with or without her, you'll have a great time. (I do the bizarre pre-vacation house cleaning thing too!)

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  4. Have a great trip. Take pictures of Target. That is as close as I will ever get to one!

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  5. a 3 hour nap sounds awesome, sometimes you just need it. i find that happens every so often. i feel like it is the body saying if you don't rest me I will get sick on you.

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  6. You deserve a nap. more often!

    Good luck with the packing. I have trouble doing it for my family...can't imagine the task you have at hand.

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  7. You have 2 vans?

    Today I tried to get my husband to take the kids swimming by himself. It didn't even occur to me to go with and then have to go home because I didn't feel well. You are brilliant. I will remember this method for use in the future.

    I always have big plans of getting the house clean before going on vacation, but when it's time to leave, I'm just happy to have everything packed.
    We usually come home to piles of laundry.
    (unsorted, of course)

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  8. I have decided that you don't actually miss a second of work while on vacation. You do it all before and after in a big rush instead! Have fun. I guess.

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  9. I need to learn how to lure my husband to the pool and leave him there so I can go take a nap. ;) But I think if I suggested taking two vehicles, he would catch on. :)
    Have fun preparing for vacation! And have fun while you're gone too! ;)

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  10. Wait, I'm confused. Are you taking the frozen dinners on the road with you to eat? Surely not, which means someone is staying home while the rest of you are gone. So, who is the lucky one?

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  11. is that a mom thing? worrying about what the house looks like when being on the road? my mom seems to have the same cleaning habits as you do...mh...
    *please don't let me become like my mom when i'm older* rofl

    franzi

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  12. We went on vacation last week, a camping trip to Washington DC. My knitting was carefully packed in two places: the current project with one extra skein of yarn in my backpack, and the extra yarn and extra projects in another bag. I ran out of yarn at the last conference I went to, I wasn't about to let that happen again!

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  13. Good luck with "vacation." I always like the idea in theory, but I have to remember that calling it a "vacation" is misleading. It's more a change of scenery, but all my work goes with me. ;)

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  14. Mrs. Smith - Yes, we're taking them. We stay at a place with a minimally-equipped kitchen, so I can heat them up there. As you know, eating out would be prohibitively expensive.

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  15. Just planning the knitting would take me half a day. And I'd have to buy needles because the ones I need are in the middle of projects, but not projects that I want to work on this week.

    I feel your pain.

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  16. Socks! You can even take back up socks without sacrificing too much room for packing snacks.

    Socks would be the trip knitting.

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  17. Have a wonderful vacation. I compulsively clean house before leaving, even if only for the weekend because what if we die? And my family has to come in and go through my things? I can't have people commenting behind my dead body that my house was messy, as I'm sure my death wouldn't overshadow that.

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  18. I don't clean the house before I go on vacation, precisely because, hey, what if I died? I'd never get to enjoy the fruits of my labors!

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  19. Umm . . . your to-do list for one day reads like mind for an entire week.

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  20. You had me at vacation.

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  21. Yeah, I have to clean the whole house too before I leave on vacation. I like it to be that way when I return so that I don't have to do anything. Well, except vacation laundry.

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  22. I too have to have a clean house before I leave for vacation.

    Have a great trip!

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  23. Man, you're a busy woman!

    Only one time did I forget to clean my house before a vacation. We were going on a cruise and at the check-in station we learned we needed the girls' birth certificates. We had to call from LA to Chicago to get a friend to go to our house, ignore the mess, find the docs, and fax them to California. I was so embarrassed.

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  24. LOL. Gotta have a clean house!
    Hope you have a great vacation!
    Do it up with the "Living History " stuff,
    If nothing else, the kids will be able to tell large numbers of stories to their own kids!
    Pax, E

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