Making a list

A week ago, I sat with a nice buffer between then and my departure date for Japan. It seemed at the time that I had it all together: my presentation was done, I was practicing Japanese about a half hour each day, my tickets were purchased and I had all the pieces of my uniform I needed.

Then the list of "to dos before I go" started getting longer. It includes everything from seemingly trivial things like getting my hair cut (notice I said "seemingly") to items that will result in my arrest if I don't (doing my taxes).

I've also chosen this opportunity to deep clean my apartment. I have this fear that I will come back to a nest of mold, mice and spider webs if I don't. This is likely unrealistic, considering that the soy sauce at the bottom of my fridge has probably been there a lot longer than a month. I think my motivation to to this stems from two things:

1) The great ant invasion of 2004. I left a sink full of dishes on weekend when I was away and came back to find the insects had set up a multi-level fort in my kitchen. Lines of them were marching from my window sill onto my cabinets. It was the most disgusting thing ever, and ever since then I won't leave anything out when I go out of town.

2) I can never do anything half way. Maybe that's why I don't clean much. Because I know when I do, it will be an all day, finger grinding, on my knees effort to purge my apartment of every spare crumb.

Needless to say, cleaning is just one of the tasks I need to finish before I fly away. I won't bore you with the two-page list.

Lesson learned: There's no escaping it. Going on vacation is work.