FROM THE PAST: TOO SOON

I can tell you with complete honesty that as I write this post I feel the same way I expect to feel when this is posted:  It is too soon for this to be happening.  The fact that the “this” that is coming too soon as I write is leaving  for the trip and the “this” coming too soon as this is posted is the nearing end of the trip is a minor detail.

It’s been a wild run getting ready for the trip: eighteen months of preparation and studying what I want to do, what might be done, talking to people, anticipating, and preparing.  I can only imagine that the last fifteen days have been a whirlwind without compare.  I’ve been in at least three different countries–possibly four–and the airspace of who knows how many others (I don’t know exactly where the flight paths of my two flights went).  I’ve crossed Sweden from Göteborg to Stockholm on the Göte Kanal and spent the past couple days wandering around Stolkholm’s museums.  In the next five days, I’ll do some more museum hopping, go to the Stockholm Temple, then go up to Uppsala to see a few places my father treasured when he lived there and some old friends.  There is simply not enough time to see everything I want to see.  Somewhere in there, I’ll have a birthday.

And then, I’ll go home.

As quick as this vacation is approaching, and as much as I have left to do at the time of writing (all that choosing and folding and packing!), I know that right now, I don’t want to go home.  I want to revel and hop back to England to see DearestBex again.  I don’t want pictures stored on my digital camera and memory card to be all I have left in so few days.

And yet, as much as I’ll miss it here, I cannot wait to share this adventure with those at home.  Since the beginning of May, I’ve had coupons for online picture-making websites bought and lined up so that when I come home I can send off the files and have a little book to tote around and show everyone.  I even have enough coupons bought that I’ll be able to make two books of my time in England and send one off to DearestBex.

The end is approaching too soon, just as the beginning is, but I still have so much adventure left.  Why dwell on what’s coming when I can have what’s already here?

FROM THE PAST: SEA/LAKE/KANAL SICK

Okay, confession time: I am terrified of being sea sick.  Which is cool and dandy, since I won’t be sea sick until the end of this cruise.  No, right now, I’m Kanal sick, if anything, and looking forward to being lake sick.

That’s right, on Göta Kanal, there are two lakes to cross.  One (Lake Vänern) isn’t too bad, just large.  The other one (Lake Vättern), however, is so deep that I have nightmares about falling down endlessly . . . and drowning, I suppose.  Mostly falling.  That nightmare started about eight months before the trip.  I hope by now, it’s gone.

Now, seeing as today is only the second day on the Göta Kanal, I won’t be lake sick yet.  But, I am the perpetual worry wort and I am even worried about being Kanal sick (or making myself sick with worry).  This has been my not-so-secret terror for months.  Mom has been reassuring me with promises of medicine (I presume by now the patch is firmly attached behind my ear), I’ve been reassuring myself with my few boat memories from my long-gone childhood.

But I am still terrified.  I keep imagining I’ll spend the entire trip barfing my guts up–sicker than a dog!  And I HATE barfing!

My only consolation is that I actually have been a water baby since my memory begins (and before–we have the tapes to prove that I was that child who learned to walk and swim at nearly the same time).  When I was young, boats didn’t bother me.  Heck, when I was in college I still had the ability to sleep through the roly-poly of an earthquake!  Hopefully these things will still count for something and I won’t have to worry about being sea/lake/kanal sick.

I’d really like to enjoy my vacation.