Packing up and moving on

The packers arrive tomorrow morning. Everything gets boxed and taken away. It remains to be seen how the children will react. We'll have a week of living in an almost barren house - the kids have their beds, at least, but that's about it. We shall be living off take-away menus and plastic mugs. Oh my God - I'll have to pack away the espresso machine! That's it - we're staying!

Thou shalt not kill

"Thou shalt not kill" does not apply to murder of one's own kind only, but to all living beings; and this Commandment was inscribed in the human breast long before it was proclaimed from Sinai. ~Leo Tolstoy

Overload

School Reports, Presentation Day, DVD editing, Talent Show auditions, packing up the house, paperwork for the new jobs in Thailand, translating said paperwork, proof-reading other people's reports, cleaning up the computer for safe shipment, arranging transportation to an orphanage for donation of children's furniture and money raised, finishing that book I borrowed, completing the latest assignment in my Counselling Diploma before we leave, saying goodbyes to people and places who have been family and home for the last six years... 7 days to go.

Yep, I'm a bit stressed.

Relief

The 2007 PYP Exhibition is over! It's a great event, a culmination of a lot of hard work by a lot of people, but it's also a huge relief that it has finished, was a success and we can move on...A photo or two to follow perhaps when my laptop has finished crunching video files...Two weeks now until the off, and leaving the day we finish work is beginning to feel like a mistake.

Three weeks and counting

Actually it was three to go...fillings that is, as well as weeks. All done now.

So, Friday 25th May. Calidore is 17th months today. And we now have exactly three weeks left in Vietnam. This time in three weeks, we'll be having out last morning in work at ISHCMC - the kids go home early, midday I think. We go home at about 2.30 and we'll have to leave (as in LEAVE!) our house at about 6pm to get our flight...A last minute play at Riverside and a mango/pasionfruit smoothie for the road? Perhaps, if the cat has been taken care of by then.

Tonight we have a baby-sitter and will be heading up to a very plush restaurant on the top floor of the Sheraton Hotel, overlooking Saigon. One of those things we've been meaning to do, but never quite got round to...

Furniture has started to disappear from the house - not of its own volition, I might add - and the all-too-familiar sight of half-packed boxes encroaches...

Teeth

I lost a filling just over a week ago and went to a somewhat upmarket dental clinic, given that my insurance through work now covers such luxuries. The photos-in-the-mouth tricks I can do without, but the instant x-ray gimmickry is fairly impressive. Even if it does reveal that 11 of your existing fillings need drilling out and replacing with a scarily high-tech sounding high-impact composite. I have two left to go, this afternoon.

Oh joy.

In the absence of other inspiration...

We all love animals. Why do we call some "pets" and others "dinner?" ~k.d. lang

because we don't care...or because we don't think?