The Best Laid Plans

There is a lot of traveling in my immediate future.  Easter is coming up with a promise of a few days in the Highlands with one of my ‘other’ families, including a certain Mrs Tasmania who shamelessly shucked off NSW for a man! A MAN, I tell you!

There’s a certain former flatmate’s wedding in Melbourne (I fell a strong pull to Melbourne… I won’t lie) at the beginning of May and I’m actually considering driving down (9-10 hours driving including generous rest breaks). Melbourne… [blissful sigh] I’m planning on staying in you a few days… there’s lots of techy goodness in Melbourne, I plan to have meetings, in cafes and/or bars. It will be awesome. And cold.

Before all this local travel action had been arranged I had planned to go to NZ to celebrate not just my birthday but my mother’s and brother’s who all fall within a 2 week period.  Yes, this is epic.  I haven’t celebrated my birthday with my family (it’s tomorrow, the 6th, if you’re interested) since my 40th so it would have been nice to be there, and to spend time with my Mum who’s officially retiring, having reached the grand age of 65. It would be lovely to see them, and to spend a couple of one on three days with some rather gorgeous boys…  But as it is, the whole crew, sans me, will be having lunch at a grand cafe. I will be missing, and will miss it, and will no doubt, also be missed.

But for whatEVER reason, I couldn’t get my sh*t together enough to book at ticket, couldn’t make the planets align in a fashion that gave me peace in my soul, so many variables to consider, so many balls to balance, so many people to try and make happy.

Cash.  That’s a big one… and when there are thousands of dollars worth of outstanding invoices in the ether and NOT in my bank account… organising flights is problematic, particularly given he time of the year.  Traveling across the Tasman at this time of the year, (school holidays and Easter) isn’t going to be cheap… or at least, cheap fares will have been snaffled up very early on… so even if the clients’ bills had been paid the price was going to be more than I really want to pay this close to the end of the financial year.

Time. That’s another biggie… it seemed rather like there weren’t enough days in the month – I still have to earn a living!! So, even getting home for Mum’s birthday could have been done… but maybe then only for a weekend.  A long way to go.. for a lot of dollars, and worth it, yes.. but not completely pragmatic in terms of the days of potential earning versus lost income due to gorgeous time wasting child fun balancing act.

That darn cat.  The Princess (whom I dearly love and who drives me completely barking on a regular basis) requires a fair amount of attention… and while I can leave her alone for a weekend with the promise of visits from the upstairs neighbour who gives out food and cuddles…  her usual cat hotel to which she goes to stay for longer periods, was unavailable in ‘birthday week’ and house sitters are apparently thin on the ground… so going home in April was going to be difficult from her point of view.

So even though I’d check in regularly to the airline’s sites to see what fares were like I couldn’t consciously, or unconsciously commit to coming home around April 16th. This messes with the head of my family who like to KNOW what’s going on… truth to tell it messes with mine… the inability to commit was causing friction that I didn’t even know about!  So while I wanted to make it work, and didn’t want to disappoint anyone, I couldn’t see a way clear to make it happen.

So, as is often the case when looking at all the options, the choice had to be made between disappointing my [brain injured, emotionally sensitive] mother and actually being able to sensibly structure my calendar and wallet to afford the time away from my desk.  Of course, in the end, the smoothing of the waters was much less stressful than it would have been to actually drop everything and head across the ocean to accommodate everyone’s wishes.

And what do you know, the universe, it its wisdom came to the party, and within an hour of making the decision to move the trip into late May early June – Air NZ threw me an airfare sale that will get me there and back for $300.

So, I’ll be in NZ from May 27th to June 12th.  Fi, there will be Northland action… can I come and stay?? I want to see you roller skate!!

I shall be looking after my 3 delicious nephews in Auckland for some of that time… (Trans-Tasman babysitting FTW!) and Princess Lulubelle will be safely installed at the cat hotel, in a very timely fashion while her hosts convalesces from some hospital action.

So… sometimes, when the planets don’t align… it’s for a very good reason… because changing the plan was actually going to be the better plan all along.