preparations

Anybody who knows me also knows that I am the preparation-queen. Preparation is my middle name. Well, it would be if I had one. My therapist, Dr. Phil*, says it's genetic so take a quick guess which parent I might have it from (I see a mighty lot of fingers pointing to you, Tim).



*Fuer meine deutschen Freunde: Dr. Phil ist ein Fernseh-Psychologe.


So how to prepare for a trip like this?

First of all, I figured out that Canada must lie to north of us, because everybody knows Eskimos live there and the National Geographic channel never shows one drinking a margarita, so it surely isn't south of the border.

Rumor also has it that they are divided into 2 parts and each speaks their own language, a form of English and French - how ridiculous is that? That would be like the United States being divided into Florida and The Rest and one part speaking English and the other another language, say Spanish.

I have no idea how this language thing came about - maybe the French ran out of people to execute and crossed the ocean, looking for new possibilities; wait, maybe I got that mixed up with Texas.

Anyways, I got the English part down pretty quickly by watching Canadian - dubbed movies. Lots of "ey" and "aboot" going on there!
I walked around practicing it so often that my husband Tom finally said he'd put "a boot" somewhere if I wouldn't quit, but by that time I pretty much had perfected the art.

Next problem: learning French. I don't want to show up somewhere and sound like a little dummy just because I can't order escargots in French. So I armed myself with a language CD and a bottle of merlot - I figured, if you have the drinking of French wine down, the rest will follow.

Well, it so happened that I had to find out that je parle mal francaise et moi Kopf est tres mal aussi.
Maybe I should stick to memorizing "I have to barf" in French.









So forget that; if I do know how to do something, it's figuring out a map. I told Tim I'd do the routing and pick out motels if he told me the general direction.
O.k., o.k., I am a control freak - there, I said it! Dr. Phil, are you proud of me? My theory is, if I do it, it'll be done right.
So I spent days at a time figuring out routes, calculating mileage and researching websites to find places to stay, being only interupted by the feeding of our 3 hungrily screaming kids (the 4-legged kind), which in itself is a full-time job, and the cleaning up of their hunting trophies.

Then, as sure as Captain Ahab sank with Moby Dick, when I had it all figured out THE email would come: "Maybe we should take this route instead".

Soooooooooo, let's do the whole thing again - and pass me that bottle of merlot!