Tying up ends

* I didn't come up with as many "embargoed post" topics as I'd like. There will be a few while I'm gone (I get back around the 6th), but not as many as I'd have liked to have had.

* I am almost totally packed. The "morning things" (e.g., makeup and the like) still have to go in tomorrow, and I need to finalize which shoes, but other than that I think I'm ready. I wound off some yarn, and I will be taking a couple of ongoing projects (the biggest being the Augusta cardigan) with the hopes of finishing them.

* Fortunately a couple of the bills that I pay with checks came in the mail today so I can get those sent off.

* I mowed the lawn yesterday and cut some brush; I cut more today and edged. I discovered the poison ivy was back so I put herbicide on it (that's the ONLY place I use herbicide, but I can't very well pull it or cut it - I get it badly enough).

Other than that, I have that odd loose-ends feeling I often get before traveling: not worth starting a new book, especially not a "big" book that would be hard to carry along. No point in going grocery shopping (though I do not know at this point what I'll eat for dinner, and I hate the kind of catch-as-catch-can leftovers-and-single-serving pick up meals that you do). I'm also sort of tired; that could be the result of having spent the past couple afternoons working outside.

Also, just, traveling, meh. The being-on-the-train part is OK (though this year I have to ride a bus from St. Louis to Bloomington, trackwork again). But the whole "everything has to fall into place and there are numerous things that could go wrong" part is not my favorite:

- I could have car trouble on the way there, or run into construction so bad that I miss my train
- My train is so late I miss dinner on it, and of course because it's a sleepy East Texas town on a Sunday, there may well be no option for food other than the Dairy Queen
- Something is wrong with my reservation or the sleeper car or whatever and I wind up in coach, which is loud and has no privacy and you can't sleep properly
- There's some problem on the way, ranging from a delay, to the train hitting a car (which is very bad for the car and sometimes bad for the train) to some other misadventure....
- Problems getting to or getting on the bus - missing the bus in St. Louis would be bad, though I suppose I could catch one of the Lincoln Service trains later in the day....

But yeah. I know I worry excessively but for me, having a list in my head of "these are the things that could go wrong" either (a) allows me to have a plan in mind for what to do, if there is anything that can be done or (b) a little bit of magical thinking: if I know it can happen then it won't (I call this the "stick you don't see" hypothesis: when I mow the lawn, I go and I pick up all the sticks and fallen branches I can find so they won't jam the mower. But there is ALWAYS that stupid tiny stick, like an inch long and a half-inch thick, that I don't see, and I roll over it, and the mower handle winds up thumping me in the gut because the blades jam and it stops.)

(And I do need to run out, I guess, and figure out some kind of packaged thing I can tote along to eat just in case I don't get breakfast (e.g., the train is early in to St. Louis, it's not breakfast time yet, and they're chivvying us all off to get on the bus). I have to have some food in the morning as one of the medications I take can both mess up your stomach and tank your blood sugar if you take it without food....)

Confession: often right before a break I think "OH, I wish I weren't traveling" though that's mainly because of the effort that travel involves. (Also, things are ....different.....now. It's hard having aging parents. It's hard having the cats I knew during my grad-school years gone, and no cats there to replace them. It's hard seeing the town so changed.)