Exchanges

Every day, I have a goal to book something.  Something geographically remote from me, way in the future, virtually inconceivable and also, non-refundable.  Scary!  A flight from Venice to Lisbon in July.  Really?  Doesn't that seem a little far-fetched?  A hotel room in Omaha?  What if we change our minds?  D. C. Metro passes?  We don't even live there!

It's all part of Preposterous Plan 2013.  Golda asked me why I have to have these dumb names for everything.  It's because I have to mentally put all of these preparations under the same umbrella, making them pieces of a whole.  It's not fun to say, "I'm booking a hotel room in Cleveland."  Whoop-de-doo.  I'd rather proclaim (preferably after a loud trumpet fanfare), "Well, another piece of P. P. 2013 has fallen perfectly into place!  My master plan is taking shape!"

It's like creating a piece of art, except you don't need any skills.  You start with the large brushstrokes, again in the form of dramatic proclamations:  "THIS is the summer we are going to do a long road trip," or "Our daughters will be fine in Europe for five weeks without us!"  Then you take the canvas and start filling in the lines and details of a grand adventure.  I have a stack of travel books by my bed, and I use them to enter information into my brain where it can eventually be distilled into a decision and then further distilled into a reservation.  I can only do a little bit at a time because it is kinda stressful to turn these ideas into realities.  I mean, what if it doesn't work out?

And then there's the money factor.  I worked all morning on a violin so I could turn my time into two e-tickets from Lyon to Venice.  So that piece of the puzzle is in place, in exchange for a day of my life.  I'm also turning most of Scott's hard work into various reservations!  It's safe to say that I have a history of this kind of behavior, as do my parents, and I'm afraid it's contagious.  Scott has definitely caught it.  Golda and Ruby earned the money for their airline tickets and brought the money to us in fives and ones.  It was a thrilling night when we all counted the money and their flights were booked.  They had typed up a proposal, listing all the things they were willing to give up in return for this opportunity.  It brought tears to our eyes that they have wanted this so much.  When Scott gave his final consent for the trip, they both burst into tears, and so did Scott and I!

You probably can't decipher this, but it's a four-page itinerary from 1996, for two newlyweds, one of whom thought it would be reasonable to spend all summer traveling, since we were poor students and all.  These pages are well-worn, soft and floppy and stained with various drop of hot chocolate and bread crumb grease.  We referred to them daily during our two months in Europe and our drives to and from New York.  It sounds fun to get a Eurrail pass and just wing it all summer, but it's a lot less exhausting to have a plan when you're too tired to think.  And believe me, when I get this summer sorted out, I'm definitely going to be too tired to think.  Good thing I'll have an itinerary to tell me what to do next!

So here's the plan, the Preposterous Plan 2013:  Golda, Scott and Ruby are going to New York for Golda's 16th birthday.  From there, Scott will put them on a plane to France (via Iceland!) where they will stay with my friends in Lille and Lyon for a month.  Then they'll spend a long weekend in Venice with some FOAF's, followed by 10 days in Spain with my dear friend Gema.

Meanwhile, four kids (only 4?!) and I will be making our way across the country in the Preposterous Plan Van, arriving in D. C. in time to pick up Golda and Ruby at the airport on their way home from Lisbon.  Scott is flying with Tzioprah and joining us in D.C. for a week of sightseeing, while we stay in my cousin's house.  If you have any must-see items in the area, please tell me.  I'm so excited to show the kids all the monuments and spend time in some of the Smithsonians!  At the end of the trip, some of us will get home in under 8 hours.  Some, well, a few days longer.  We have some fun stops planned for the route home.  (More cousins!!)

When P.P. 2013 was but an inkling, I didn't know how we would ever pay for it.  Get this:  all the kids are taking the summer off from all their music lessons!  And that's how we are funding the Stateside part of Preposterous Plan 2013.  In fact, it is in some ways the most preposterous part of it all.  It may not seem like a big deal, but to me it is.  I absolutely love the kids playing instruments, but we do it for a lot of other reasons too.  (Ex: every single one of Golda's teacher's students have gotten full-ride scholarships to Weber.)  When I first entertained the idea of reallocating that lesson money, it seemed like too much to give up.  But just as important as the music lessons are the crazy things you think you can't do, but then you find a way.  Golda and Ruby found a way to stay in Europe all summer, virtually for free, and then they found a way to earn the money to get there.  (Next summer, our house may be packed with European kids cashing in on the exchanges we have set up!)

Traveling might not be your thing, but whatever your thing is, you can get it if you're willing to sacrifice enough other things.  The trick in life is to sacrifice the right things, and sometimes you don't know if you're making a good bargain until later.  Here are some vintage pictures of a bargain Scott and I made sixteen years ago that turned out to be worth every dollar in table-waiting tips we spent.

 World Trade Center...a classic picture, and sad.

 Portugal...we spent a week in the Algarve, renting a room in someone's house right on the beach for 10 bucks and a liter of Fanta Orange a night.  Scott and I had gone crazy in New York and dyed our hair.  I then apparently colored my eyebrows to match with some sort of industrial-strength magic marker.

 Venice

 We met my dad in Rome where he saved Scott's life with a "Metamucil Cocktail."  We won't go into details!  We also surprised my mom in Austria, where she was leading a group of students on a trip.  She didn't recognize us with our new hair colors!

 I love this picture of us on the Spanish Steps.

 The day we met our lifelong friends, Zeljko and his family, when we impulsively jumped off a train in Greece.  Then we thought it was by chance that we met the Mijatovic family.  It wasn't.

 Istanbul, caught between two continents overlooking the Bosphorus.

Worn out!  It was great to be back in the States.  We brought two of my young cousins and an injured cat named Lucky with us from Pennsylvania when we drove home, then we just continued on to Imperial Beach with my family, to relax on the beach and recover from all those overnight trains!

On the other hand, we have also given up countless trips to stay home and have (countless) kids.  "You are my blue Italian lake, you are my bit of foreign sky," and all that.  Of course, that turned out to be a good bargain, too, since we now have built-in traveling buddies as well as people to stay home with whenever our travel plans extend only as far as the Redbox and Kaysville Theater for a bag of popcorn to go.