I like to plan things. Certain things. I don’t, for some reason, seem to like to plan what I’m going to eat for the week, which leaves me very often going to the store three or four times a week after work for things like rice or cucumbers or hot chocolate, when I know I should just have a spreadsheet with all my meals (cross-referenced with all the ingredients I need to buy) in my bag when I go to the store and just go once a week and then cook nutritious and tasteful meals for the week. Nope, don’t do that. I don’t seem to like to plan to keep my house very neat, either, preferring instead to rush around madly about an hour before someone comes over, in the rare instance that the person who is coming over isn’t Carl and therefore can’t be persuaded to do my dishes as a favor.
What I do like to plan, for the past FIVE MONTHS AND CAN YOU BELIEVE I’M ON THE PLANE NEXT WEEK, NEXT WEEK is my trip. Yeah, I’m going to France, I don’t know if I’d mentioned it lately. Here’s what my plan for my trip looks like:
Day One: Fly to Paris. Make out with generously-proportioned SAS flight attendant named Inga. Scam the eye cover thing they hand out.
Day Two: Meet Mom in Paris, do Mom-and-daughter things. (In Paris!) Consume much cheese and look very cute in awesome shoes. Hug Mom a lot.
Day Four: Say goodbye to Mom, take train to Loire Valley. Potentially make out with young French boy named Giles on train, depending on how early train is, and also if Giles is not a smoker, which exhaustive research into French movies made in the seventies, thanks to Netflix, suggests he very well may be. If so, or if train leaves very early in morning, knit instead.
Day Six: Visit final home of Leonardo da Vinci and send Carl postcard. Consider drinking wine during vineyard visit.
Day Seven: Take five-hour train trip to Grenoble to visit college friends David and Joey. Beg them not to make me go cross-country skiing directly after getting off train. Wave good bye to dark, brooding make-out-ee Jean-Marc on train and show off the knitting I got done during the journey.
Days Eight through Ten: Go to Switzerland with David and Joey. Pose for pictures next to cows, eat chocolate and fondue at every meal, and open numbered account at Swiss bank. Buy fancy Swiss Army knife for Carl. Realize that none of us speak any German at all. Wait in cozy ski lodge, sipping hot chocolate and making out with ski instructor named Gunther, while Dave and Joey ski for fifteen hours straight. Restrain self from twirling around on hill Sound of Music style because surely, surely, the Swiss are tired of that by now. Send postcard to Dr. Ranta but don’t mention how much chocolate is being consumed. Do mention assiduous flossing while traveling.
Day Eleven through Sixteen: Say goodbye to David and Joey, take train to Lake Como, shift gears and begin speaking Italian, as far as possible. Regret not listening to Italian language CDs all the way through before leaving home. Eat gelato as soon as possible after alighting from train. Eat, on average, two gelati a day. Kayak in Lake Como, take cooking class, walk around lake, bike around lake, revel in correct pronunciation of both first and last names, every time by Italians. Make out with handsome gelato-maker named Paolo and get free samples. Mix it up between lemon and panna cotta, with occasional forays into frutti di bosco and tiramisu. Try not to spill gelato on shirt in front of Paolo.
Day Seventeen: Be dragged, kicking and screaming, home from Italy. Make out with comely SAS flight attendant named Birgitte, and begin to plan next trip immediately.