crapture this.

Been spending the last few days mostly hunched over my laptop in my room, which currently looks like the aftermath of a suitcase-inspection detonation at the airport. A suitcase that was full of wires, to-do lists, and mini hotel shampoo bottles (intact, taped-up in their little ziplock bags).


I am having pre-travel jitters.

It's when you pack a shirt only to take it out again, put it back in then shove it away in the corner of a room like the unsuccessful games of catch I play with my ham-aholic dog, Pochito (I throw and fetch). Pack light, light, light! Are two mini contact lens solution bottles going to last me all summer? I would just go with the glasses, but I want to see the world in panoramic vision and unblurred. I'm thinking ahead of myself anyway because I have postponed all packing activities to iron my work shirts first, as if that would greatly minimize the ruthless ruffling they would endure in the waltzing yet ungraceful arms of the baggage handlers...



And already, I'm having that nagging worry that I will not get to experience as much as I can, every day that I'm there. I should be preparing more for work at the Tribunal, which right about now sounds as daunting as preparing to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro. I worry I did not get the multiple-entry visa, signed up for the wrong insurance plan, and the world is coming to an end this Saturday. That's it. I have wasted my last days in neurotic anticipation instead of attending rapture parties!!


But my goal should not be to do as much as possible; it should be to take in as much as I can. I am a lousy planner but I survive quite swimmingly with less structured expectations (a common refrain among bad planners, you say?). A wise old Medicine Man once told me his key to happiness was to have very low expectations, and to have tricycle and hitchhiking races and cake clubs in every city. But there ain't no way I'll be packing a three-wheeler in my two-wheeler suitcase. What I need is Tinklebell fairy dust, and a spoonful of SUGAR!