'In' words for today

Thelma & I are about to become international jet-setters, tee hee! In less than a week we will board that flight and head to Blighty. For someone who, only a month ago, said to Thelma “Go to England? No, no I can't possibly. That would mean getting on a plane. You know I don't fly”, I'm remarkably calm.

OK, that's not true – I think I'm mistaking inertia for calm. It's more a sort of 'rabbit in the headlights' frozen-ness. So much to do, so little time. I never did find that orange something to wear that I was after on the weekend. This year's version of 'orange' is a sickly salmon pink that makes me look ill.

Omigod, and my to-do list keeps growing.

Yesterday I ticked off two items:
*** Organise international roaming for my phone
*** Buy some English money (and at 47 pence to the Aussie dollar I didn't get much bang for my buck!)

But those achievements were cancelled out by:
*** Book flights to France – so confusing! I gave up. Try again Tuesday.
*** Organise a plumber – Half an inch of cold water on my bathroom floor almost sent me and my fluffy slippers arse over tit at 6am yesterday. There's probably a more jet-setterish term than that to describe the desperate scrabble to keep my footing, but I don't know what it is.

Slithering about on wet tiles and emptying the vanity unit (do I really need 17 half-full bottles of shampoo and 5 litres of contact lens cleaner?) to try and determine the cause of the problem got me nowhere, and then of course there was the load of sopping wet towels that had to be washed afterwards. At least the bathroom floor is sparkly clean now. I turned off the whatchamacallit for the cold tap over the basin and went to work. When in doubt, walk away.

Dammit, sophisticated international travellers shouldn't have to contend with leaky taps!

It's now 6 days till we depart on the Big Adventure. My insomnia has reached monumental proportions. I've been awake since 2.30. I was eating crumpets with Vegemite at 4.30 this morning. Well, actually not REAL Vegemite – it was that new blend that they haven't named yet – in my heart of hearts I call it Yukkymite, because it's just, well, yukky. I bought a whole jar of the stuff, though, so I feel obliged to finish it, otherwise it may well end up joining the half-empty shampoo bottles in the Cupboard of Despair.

Ah, there goes the kettle – time for an injection of caffeine, or I shall never make it through another work day. I'm wearing an eye-stabbingly yellow jumper and striped hangover socks (so named because no-one with a hangover could look at them without throwing up) to help keep myself awake.

I keep telling myself that this time next week we shall be in the air somewhere between here and London, and all of this will seem insignificant, right? Right?