Paladin Vicki, Defeater of Stress

I don't deal well with waiting - I like action, getting stuff done, attacking the source of the stress to defeat it, cut off its head and wave it around triumphantly.  Stephen and I have both felt like we've been just marking time for the last couple of months - going to work everyday with everyone knowing we were leaving (quack quack), unable to start packing or really doing anything because it was too early.  Three giant, evil, fire-breathing sources of stress looming, and all we could do was wait.  Argh!  
When we were originally planning the trip, we thought that a two week break between finishing work and leaving the country was more than adequate - I think we'd both imagined ourselves having picnic lunches and playing computer games most of the day, having a nice relaxing break.  


Yesterday, on my second last day of work, I had to draw up a calendar to work out how to fit everything in before we leave.  Two sets of removalists (one moving a few boxes to Toronto, one moving everything else to a storage container in Bendigo), my family on the Sunshine Coast to visit, driving Stephen's car down to Melbourne, organising the remaining holiday visa (China), plus packing everything we own into boxes, cleaning and vacating our unit in Sydney, and the assorted Doctors visits and other joys of overseas travel.  And somewhere in there we need to find time to catch up with friends before we leave.  Plenty of stress there.


Holidays are great fun, but there's always a bit of anticipatory stress there as well.  The Trans-Mongolian trip goes through three countries with very different cultures to ours.  They use different alphabets to write their different languages - no way of attempting to say the words and hoping someone understands you.  Rumour has it that their English is pretty much non-existent.  And their governments are terrifying.  Plenty to stress about there as well.  


Finally, there's the stress about what happens when we get to Toronto - will the visa be ok, what if we don't find jobs, how do we find a place to live, what's it going to be like, are we going to freeze to death.  


Today's our last day of work, and it's finally time for action - time to defeat the first source of stress by getting everything packed, cleaned and organised before it's time to go.  Now where did I put that sword?