--not yet

It was another day of frantically trying to get ready to leave. GST today (not finished); plus cruise papers and notes to people re my absence, plus cooking for people, plus another small party, before an unexpected dinner. I don't think my dishwasher is going to miss me. It's going to be so nice to be on that ship with a routine and quiet (I hope). I'm gettin' there.

I keep checking the weather in Hong Kong and Singapore. It's going to be a climate shock. But I am also apprehensive about air conditioning. I don't really like AC. I'm taking shawls and sweaters and socks, even though Singapore's temperature is abut 32 degrees Celsius.

I've waited too long to write today My mind is jelly or maybe yogurt - it's a culture, anyway....

I'll tell you one irrelevant thought from my inner dialogue today. I picked up an old clipping from the NYT with pictures of 3 small antique biscuit jars. My mother used to collect biscuit or cookie jars, or maybe my father did. He kept bringing them home to her after she had evinced some interest. He had a source of supply: the homes he visited (he used to make house calls). He'd see something he admired or maybe even things he didn't admire, if the people appeared rather close to the bone (i.e. poor). That's how we ended up with 6 family Bibles. He would admire the object and offer to buy it and pay the owners anything they asked. Hence the cookie jars.

There were so many cookie jars, not just special ones but everyday household cookie jars, that my mother used them as kitchen canisters. No labels on them, of course; you just had to remember that the green & yellow one contained raisins and the browny-gold one had cornmeal, and so on. I was too young to understand the reason for this use. When I got married, I bought plastic canisters for everything, and I still transfer the contents of store packages to nice jars and storage containers. That's how traditions and habits are formed: out of necessity and then out of habit. Mother needed to use the cookie jars, and then I thought that was the thing to do.

Now there was an irrelevant thought to sleep on....

Anon, anon

It's always been my belief that when the leprechauns were run out of Ireland (along with the dragons?), they took the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow and set up lotteries in the New World. No one believes in leprechauns any more but boy, do they believe in lotteries.

That's irrelevant. I'm trying to think of something other than my churning gut. It's a lethal combination: getting ready for a huge trip AND trying to do my income tax. And you know, when I say do, I don't mean do, I just mean I gather together all the papers and dump them on my accountant's desk, well, not dump, exactly, and I do collate things and I paperclip stuff together and I always date my donations in chronological order, things like that. But it's very hard on my nerves. And I still have to do my GST report.

GAK, as my friend Marla says.

Think of something else....

My concierge (that's what they call her, though she's not on the ship and I'll never meet her, so she's not my concierge) informs me that my plane leaves Toronto at 1:25 p.m.on Friday but my flight arrangement information sheet says it leaves at 01.25 on Friday morning. And Cathay Pacific doesn't give any flight information more than 24 hours ahead. However, If I go by today's and tomorrow's schedules, the flight to Hong Kong leaves in the early morning and not in the afternoon.

My gut hasn't settled down yet.

Why isn't anything simple?