Overwhelmed

So I’ve posted several times about being behind in just about every conceivable way of late (I do appreciate the irony there, by the way), but seriously… there’s just so much to do.

We leave for a month in Europe – all over northern Europe – in a little over a week. Torsten will get to see Opa and Oma again (and boy, do I think he will enjoy them now, since he’s big and full of energy and likes to move – not to mention social and curious, just like he’s been from early on), and to meet more family in Sweden and Germany. Mama will get a week alone to see things and do novel research. Papa will get to attend a conference and give some talks and see his family and his hometown. So there’s lots to look forward to (ok, I realize here that it looks like Christian will be doing a lot of work, but he always is…), and a crapload to do to get ready.

In addition to putting holds on mail and the milk delivery and blah blah blah, I must, in the next week, even with a baby, somehow complete the following:

• Finish Torsten’s christening gown. A master seamstress I am not, but I am determined to finish this. We’re having him baptized in the little town Christian’s aunt (Torsten’s soon-to-be godmother) and grandmother live in so that his family can participate (this is the only reason we’re not doing it at our church here – I admit I’m a little sad at this, since my friends at church have been so supportive since from the pregnancy onward and they are all so amazingly fond of Torsten), so he needs something to wear other than an Elmo T-shirt More on this later if I don’t completely foul it up.
• Do hordes of laundry. No, really. It’s amazing how much laundry accumulates when all you want to do is stare at a blank wall for an hour or two at the end of the day because you are just sapped. (Note to various deities in control of the weather, especially the one my son takes after: this freaking heat is not helping. A good week of thunderstorms (not interfering with our flight) would be appreciated.) I can’t seem to keep up.
• Clean up the house. This is an ongoing battle anyway, but really, who wants to come home to complete chaos? (My study excluded – I’ve almost given up on that, which is annoying, because I like my study)
• Finish typing up our itinerary. Now, before you think I’m so anal-retentive and organized (hahahahaha! anyone who knows me in real life has just laughed so hard at that idea that I promise you that there is currently mass pants-changing going on worldwide) that I schedule every second of my vacations/travel, understand that our trip is insanely scheduled and was cobbled together manually. I haven’t used a travel agent since the mid-90′s, and with the advent of the Internet, it’s quite possible to spend hours and hours figuring out exactly what you want and getting it if one site or the other isn’t giving you what you want. So in avoiding centralized sites (e.g. getting train tickets directly from Deutsche Bahn or some other national rail service when Rail Europe isn’t giving you any options or isn’t giving you a good price, going directly to hostel websites when the HI site doesn’t do family rooms or isn’t giving you information or whatever, comparing ferry services from Finland to Sweden and manually telling the U.S. travel agents that exclusively sell their tickets in the U.S. to bite you for taking a week-and-a-half to respond to a faxed request, etc.), basically, I have to take all of these arrangements and put them together into some portable and comprehensible form so that we know where the Hell we are/are going/are fleeing/etc… I’ve been working on this for days in my off-time, which is pretty scary. Then again, I’m on the move basically for the whole trip. I’ve never taken so many trains so far in such a short period of time as I will this trip. Should be interesting.
• Getting Torsten’s stuff prepared for the trip. This falls into a whole separate category from packing, because seriously… 14 hours on planes with an 8-month-old? You’d better have your shit in order.
• Packing. We’re going to try to go with one suitcase, because we really don’t want to be dragging two suitcases along with a baby, various carryons, a stroller, a diaper bag, etc, over land from Finland to Germany while switching trains, entering and exiting youth hostels, getting on ships, etc. We’ll see how that works.
• Getting Torsten video onto DVD and getting pictures onto DVD/prints made for the less technical relatives. I’ve been meaning to do this for months, and I just never get time.
• More various administrative crap for the trip that I’m sure I’ve forgotten.
• Start my new drinking habit immediately

I know there’s got to be more – I can feel it in my bones – but that’s quite enough, I think, to drive me nuts.

And now I have wasted an entire naptime whinging about what I need to get done. Go me!

I am the awesomest procrastinatrix evar.