"To Do's" Almost Done; "Just Do It" Soon to Come

Last night I was relaxing on the couch, watching TV after a long day of hurrying and scurrying with my seemingly endless "To Do" list. 

The items, thankfully, are diminishing in number, and it's a great feeling to check them off to just a couple of major tasks yet to do before we take off tomorrow morning for  "the adventure of our lives." 

Water containers for dogs in their various doggie venues need to be cleaned and filled with fresh water.  The house will need a quick vacuum and dusting. 

Most long-term messes have been deleted from the house landscape in readiment for non-family visitors. 

I'm so proud of my refrigerator, even if it does still contain about two dozen jars of jelly with varying levels of fullness.  

In some cases, just one knife mark scoop, in others, the jar is half full.  Almost empty containers have gone to the kitchen sink for a dousing of hot water and soap suds. 

Thanks to the purging, I do have lots of jelly containers for future batches.  

All the dead lettuce, petrified pieces of mystery meat and even the super-gluey brown stuff that kept the big drawers stuck shut at the fridge bottom----gone.  

Almost three plastic kitchen bags of Lovestead refrigerator goods have gone to the dump.

How does one stuff that much into one place?

The only real "litter" left in the house will appear in different places where I thought of tidbits for Elisabeth and jotted them down on available scraps of paper. 

For example, it IS important that she NOT sit in that decorative bench in the front yard. It has a broken leg, which has been fused together for cosmetics purposes only.

Todd now has a blue collar and Brooke has pink vet wrap around her collar.  That way Elisabeth and Roxane can easily identify them during their frequent exercise times.  

Foster's small enough, Kiwi has her own personal odor, and Kea's plumpness should make each of them easily identifiable.

This time tomorrow morning is going to be difficult at the very least.  I'm gonna miss those dogs.  A lot. 

I don't want to say good bye to them cuz I'll cry. 

They'll be in good hands, though.  I'm happy about that. 

We'll head out, fly to Seattle, meet Annie and Bill's sister Margaret, and by late afternoon we'll be on an Air France flight bound for Paris.  By the time I usually post on this blog Thursday morning, we'll should have arrived in Dublin. 

Last night during that relaxation time on the couch, I thought about the monumental expectation and excitement invested in this journey over the past few months.  Every morning Celtic music playing here on the computer, more than 40 notes from Annie, informing us of airline, accommodation, and rental car reservations.

Yesterday, she sent a link to McSwiggans in Galway.  Seems she met someone at a birthday party Saturday night whose family owns the restaurant.  So, we'll probably celebrate Bill and Margaret's birthday there.  http://mcswiggans.ie/

Thanks to Peg O'Sullivan who's probably on her way back to Sandpoint from Ireland today, we'll get to meet her cousins in Killarney, one who loves to show folks around and another who will take Bill and Willie fly fishing on Willie's birthday.

We may also see the Sandpoint Bergstahlers somewhere along our Western Ireland travel route.  

The emotions associated with this trip run SO deep.  We'll visit counties of our respective family roots.  

I'll take a part of my mother along to Buncrana where "Amazing Grace" will surely conjure up a whole new meaning.  

A Catholic high school named Scoil Mhuire will serve as a permanent home to a collection of Mother's Western pen and ink cards and my two books, which she illustrated.  

I view this as a "full circle" endeavor, as Mother's ancestors left Buncrana in the 1800s for Chicago. 

I think she would highly approve of her wonderful talents returning to the land of her family heritage. 

I'm so thrilled that our entire Love family will share the Irish experience (the sheep, the shorelines, the castles, the "home" lands, the gorgeous Cliffs of Moher, the Irish people, etc., etc.). 

This upcoming adventure marks the fulfillment of a dream hatched as Annie and I took our journey there three years ago.  

My only wish would be that more of my family members could go.  That would be beyond wonderful, but there's the future and maybe that will work out some day.

For now, as the "To Do's" wind down, the "Just Do It" is hours away.  And, that's pretty neat. 

Happy Tuesday.