Today is the day! The Electrician, his grandmother, and I will be hurrying to the airport this afternoon to embark on our world tour. I realize we’re technically only visiting three countries if I count the stopover in Frankfurt, but calling it our “world tour” makes me feel like a rock star. Would you like to purchase an official merchandise t-shirt? Best to buy two sizes up because it’s cheapo cotton: going to shrink like mad.

In case you’re just joining us, we fly non-stop (yay!) to London, England, where we’ll visit The Electrician’s lovely sister and her family. From there, we’ll hop another plane to Frankfurt Tuesday morning, and then yet another plane to Kuwait. According to the mystical all-seeing internet, the true distance between Edmonton and Kuwait City is more than 10,000 kilometers. As we will travel it, considering a passenger plane won’t fly that far and I wouldn’t want to be stuck in one that long even if it did, the journey is over 13,000 km each way.

I hate flying. Although I’m certain the pilots and crew will ensure our safe passage, I can’t help but plan for worst-case scenarios beginning about the time the engines throttle up for that smush a gal back in her seat zip down the runway. Again, I don’t think the plane is going to drop from the sky like whatever heavy thing Leroy just knocked unceremoniously off the kitchen counter: I just like to know what I might do if the unthinkable did happen. For the record, I would probably become a blubbering mess and almost certainly wet myself. Good thing that’s never going to happen. Good thing I loaded eleven new e-books into my Kobo this week to keep my mind of my highly, highly, highly unlikely demise.

My other major problem is claustrophobia. As a kid, I had such a hate of tight spaces that I didn’t like camping and using a sleeping bag. Being closed in makes me antsy. Even now I can’t stand wearing tight pants. I have decided I was a goldfish in a past life, and so being crammed into a small and unnatural space with no chance of escape, particularly with so many other fish like the poor scaled suckers at the pet store, makes me cringe. I am also a fidgeter, so having to behave myself and sit still for hours on end is a challenge I struggle to conquer. I would love to travel like Dorothy, and just click my snazzy shoes together to get where I want to be, but I’m told that method is only ever successful in returning home; I need to actually get somewhere first.

This is the last post written on Canadian soil (namely, my couch) for a couple weeks. The next time you hear from me here at Blue Speckled Pup, I’ll be in England for the first time ever, jet-lagged, thrilled, and officially on vacation.

Tap dance for me tonight: I’ll be crammed in an airline seat, trying not to think about gravity.

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