Preparations for The Trip.

Everything seems to be getting a bit on top of me right now. I am swamped with admin. There is so much to DO when you want to go on a life-changing, world-uprooting trip-of-a-lifetime. Go figure, huh?


So anyway, I have some of the tickets, but no visas yet. What a mission. Today, after reading the pages and pages of gumph I have to go through to get visas, I confess to a passing sneaky thought about how much easier it would be not to go at all…

I’m over it. I think.

So yes – a gazillion visas to organise. Much work to finish off. Much, much work. Cars to sell. House to rent out. The Cape Town flat to evacuate. Much stuff to sell. Much, much stuff to sell. I refuse to pay for storage while I’m away for a year. It’s hard to sell stuff in Jhb while I’m in Cape Town. I’m struggling to find the time to sort through my things in CT. There is so much to find a home for. So much to throw out. My life is a bit crazy right now. I think I might be too. If not, I undoubtedly will be by the time we leave.


One of my wee problems is that I’m just totally obsessive about everything. I hate the thought of throwing stuff out. (Save the environment!) And so, despite the big things that I have to obsess about (visas etc) I’m also doing a splendid job of obsessing about the small ones.


For the past month or so I have been trying to finish my toiletries. All the soaps, the bubble baths, the luxury creams, the sugar scrubs, the fruity flavoured lip-ices, the shimmery stuff, the sparkly stuff, the gorgeous smelly stuff that I have been given or have bought and have stock-piled over the years – the thought of not using it bothers me. A lot. And my word, but there is so much of it! How did I acquire all this stuff? How I must have squirrelled and hoarded over the years. Now every night I wallow in a divine smelling bath with the water coloured a pale pink, or blue, or green by bath salts/bubble bath. I light about 9 candles and lie in twilight. It's lovely. I should be the most relaxed person in Cape Town. Pity I’m not. The stress of sorting everything else out is winning out over the languid baths by a fairly convincing margin.


In direct contrast to my luxury bathroom living, is my recent diet. About 2 days ago it dawned on me that I need to start eating my way through the grocery cupboard. If I don’t, there will be a pile of random stuff left when I go. Donate it to a homeless person? Yes, I probably will if there is stuff left over, but in the meanwhile my logical brain has taken a vacation, my OCD has kicked in, and I am trying to eat my way through an extremely odd collection of foodstuffs. It bothers me not to try. So last night I got stuck into the packet of basmati rice. As I was cooking it, I realised that I have no tin opener, (since the time of the camping trip, when it decided that the wilds of Rocklands was a desirable place to stay) and so I could not throw in a tin of yummy ratatouille. Oh no. Desperate I was, but I still couldn’t chew my way through the tin. The only thing in the damned cupboard not clad in impenetrable iron was a packet of curry. I alo had the remains of the red pepper that N kindly donated to me when he discovered it had wrinkly skin. (The pepper was really fine to eat, but he is even pickier than I am and so he rejected it in horror. Thus I had ¾ of a very, very, very slightly wrinkly red pepper in the fridge.) So last night, supper was curried basmati rice with slightly wrinkly red pepper chopped into it. Now I don’t know – maybe some of you think that sounds nice? Bunch of freaks if you do. I don’t. I am strictly a rump steak and roast potatoes kind of girl. Or a sushi kind of girl. Or a red wine and lamb stew kind of girl. But I digress…

Anyway, curried rice and red pepper does not sound nice to me. And indeed it was not nice. I did not enjoy it. But I can’t throw food away. (More environment saving…) And so I ate it. Unfortunately, I am so little of a domestic goddess that I don’t know how much rice actually makes. This morning, breakfast was basmati curry rice and red pepper left-overs. Tomorrow I will probably have to finish the stuff off.

After that, I might never eat rice again. (Note to self – potentially revise food plans for Asia…)



I console myself with the thought that every horrible thing I consume now from the grocery cupboard is saving me money for the trip. But I am not looking forward to this weekend’s meals.