We have official passed the tipping point; we are now so close to our family trip to Ethiopia and Rome that there is not a single thing more I can do. Simply put, it’s out of my hands, and I couldn’t be more relieved.

 Despite my absolute best intentions, there was rather a lot of hand-wringing and fretting happening over here as I worried my way through the planning of this trip. Hubby was blessed little help, as it happened, adopting a happy-go-lucky attitude about the whole endeavor. Every time he chirped, “Don’t worry…It’s an adventure!” I simultaneously felt both a welcome wave of reassurance and the solid urge to pop him right in the jaw.


 I would have loved to have succumbed to his little adventure, except for the nagging suspicion that to do so would have ended our trip at the door to the plane.

Travel visa? Passports? Yellow fever certificates? Hotel rooms? Translators? Transportation? Pfffffhhhhht. Hubby believes in the goodness of people and the Universe. That kind of stuff always works itself out, he says, to which I respond, “HELL, YEAH. ‘Cause I do it! I am the magical goodness of the Universe, goddammit!”


 (Okay. That sounded a little self-important, even to me. What I meant to say is merely that we have never had to trust his theory, because some unnamed, unlauded person is doing all of his worrying for him.) 

THIS girl

 I think this is one of those instances where mathematically Hubby and I equal each other out as so: 1 frantic stress-bunny X 1 blissfully naive optimist 2 = one well-adjusted, productive member of society. At least I hope so. Otherwise it’s just two maladjusted lunkheads bouncing their crazy off of each other, so, yeah. Let’s go with that first thing.


Whatever. That’s all in the past, now. With our departure date looming, it’s time to simply sit back and enjoy the anticipation of a well-planned adventure. Certainly, it’s fruitless to worry at this point that the tour company I found online is meeting us at the airport for cash money, days before any of our tours.  I mean, what could go wrong with paying them then and there? And what good could it possibly do to exert any energy on the fact that we were not able to obtain travel visas here in the US, so are going to have to get them in the Addis Ababa airport. What’s the worst that could happen, right? 

Hey. If Tom Hanks can live in an airport terminal, we can, too!

And it is most decidedly too late to worry that our guesthouse emailed me this morning and has the wrong dates for our reservation. HAHahaha…See how I laugh carelessly in the face of looming disaster….?


My stomach hurts.