Sunday, April 6, 2008

Is It Time to Go Yet?

Trips are fun! But as some of you know, getting ready for them can be a lot of work. Sometimes I'd like to skip that part and just jump in the car and go! But then I look at the car and think, "I'd better get that thing cleaned up or the people we're going to visit will think we're messy and make us sleep in the garage." And how many of us really don't want to clean the house before we leave, but do it because in the back of our minds we're thinking, "If I don't make it home again, I don't want people coming into my house to arrange my affairs and thinking what a messy person I am!"

So this morning we got up bleary-eyed and aching after a great "Welcome to Ouagadougou!" event the evening before at Calvary Baptist Church in Gravenhurst, ON. After our morning injection of caffeine, and putting all the materials from the presentation away in their proper place, we contemplated what needed to be done before we could leave on Monday morning.

First there was the housework. I made a valiant effort to put it off as long as possible by hiding in my office and doing e-mail and correspondence, but finally had to fire up the vacuum cleaner and get busy doing my part. At least I like vacuuming. And I don't mind cleaning the bathrooms too much. But dusting I hate, so I'm glad Kathy does that. Then I cleaned the car while Kathy started to pack. I used to say that I didn't need to learn to do housework, laundry, or cooking because Kathy knew how to do that. After all, if both of us can do the same things, one of us is redundant, right? Unfortunately, I could never get Kathy to understand my logic for that argument.

Well, I probably should clean up my desk too. Now there's a major job! But I'm afraid that if I do, I'll never find anything when we come back. Yeah, it's a lot of work getting ready to go on a trip, but maybe we can look at this as a practice run for getting ready to return to Burkina in September.

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