Preparing for a Trip

Ginger and Tristan are at camp this week - Ginger as counselor, Tristan as one of 58 4th-6th grade campers - so it's just Ethan and me at home.  Ginger left on Saturday (staff arrives a day early) and Tristan on Sunday, and it took me until Wednesday to get caught up on the dishes and laundry.

It's fun to watch Ginger prepare to leave on a trip, as long as the watching is done from a distance.  She thinks she can do more in the time she has than is actually possible, a trait she shares with many people I think.  That's one of the difference between her and I; I tend to overestimate how long a given task will take, intentionally, so that I have some breathing room.  Ginger finds this annoying, because it often means arriving someplace ten or thirty minutes early, and having to sit and wait.  Oh, the horror of having to sit and wait because you arrived too early!  She would rather not start getting ready any sooner than she has to, so that she doesn't have to leave too early and arrive at her destination too early.

So.  After she left on Saturday (an hour late) I began cleaning the dishes, which were extra messy on account of the scones Ginger made from scratch Saturday morning.  ("Of course I have time to make scones!" she told me when she saw me raise my eyebrows.)  There were a lot of scones, and I figured that at least I would get to start the first couple of days of the week off with a delicious scone for breakfast, but alas, the dog (her dog, I might add, the one she got when I was out of town one weekend) ate them all while I was at church Sunday morning.

Three days this week, Ethan has summer school, although he stayed home sick yesterday.  Also, he has three doctor appointments.  I was only aware of one of them when the week started.  (We went to two of them; I cancelled the third.)

As we were leaving the first of his appointments, on Tuesday, I noticed the unusual clouds.  They weren't the normal marine layer that we get most morning this time of year, but splotchy, clumpy patches of white.  They were clouds that Ethan saw shapes in:  clowns, animals, etc.  (Our normal morning clouds don't look like anything, except perhaps a gray blanket that slowly disappears as the day progresses.) 

It was a pleasantly warm day, and I told Ethan that the clouds reminded me of Indiana, where we lived for three and a half years.  I wondered out loud if we'd get to see clouds like that in Nashville.

Yes, Nashville.  We're going there next week for our church's General Assembly.  When we made the decision to go, all four of us, Ginger was working, so we bought our plane tickets and reserved a hotel room. 

Then Ginger stopped working.

We've been doing everything we can to save, and have even received a little help from others, but it looks like this trip will erase what little savings we have left.  I've also applied for a new credit card, which I guess isn't such a bad thing since I personally don't have any cards except for a few store cards with no balance on them.  But still, I hope Ginger can find a job soon.

I'm trying not to be too anxious about all this - but since I seem to live off of anxiety, it's not easy.  On the other hand, I'm currently reading a novel (Shantaram) that's set in the slums of India, and it makes me feel better.  Whether that's good or bad, I don't know, but it helps to know that I could have a lot less, and still find happiness.

So next week, we head to Nashville.  If you're there, you'll recognize us:  we'll be the Ron Weasleys of the assembly, carrying around our ziploc bags of peanut butter sandwiches for lunch.