30 Hours Until Takeoff

Frenzy is an essential ingredient to every great adventure. At least as far as I can tell; I am unable to recall a single voyage that began without 11th hour packing, repacking, and obsessing over checklists (it's no secret that I'm a checklist freak). Unsurprisingly, this trip proves no exception, as I sit here typing this entry at 12:54 AM, sitting in a sea of mildewy clothes hanging from the ceilings, drying out from a too-leaky closet.  Jealous yet?

This week has been a study in freneticism. Every day has begun with two ambitious lists of to-dos: one for Jeremy to tackle in the daylight (I'm working straight through tomorrow afternoon), and another to attack in tandem during the evening hours. It quickly became apparent how much we overestimated our willpower (a Mad Men marathon tripped us up a bit midweek), and tonight we paid for that slacking with a night that included processing our 4th and 5th loads of laundry for the week, purchasing--and attempting to stow--an obscene amount of groceries, and expressing our overtiredness and anxieties through seemingly endless bickering about whether or not to keep a weeks-old acorn squash (I stubbornly insisted that I will cook it, so I have that to look forward to next week).

Fortunately, we managed to (mostly) pull it off: superficial clutter aside, we are the closest we've ever been in the past 10 months to having "a place for everything, and everything in its place." Of course, without the aid of Mary Poppins, this may have been accomplished by kicking said things into their places or simply chucking them in the rubbish, but a spoonful of wine was enough to help that medicine go down. And that was one less bottle that needed stowing.

Tomorrow will be a light day: wake up, get 200 lbs. of extra ballast onto the boat while remaining hernia-free, move the boat to another dock (we're in New Haven now), pump out our blackwater, fill fresh water, deflate and stow the dinghy, and submit two grant applications (that's me, at work).

And figure out where the fresh hell we're going.