It is a good kind of crazy here.   Our house is filled with people coming and going, talking incessantly, doing laundry, re-heating pizza, reading books, and planning dream adventures.   Our schedules are random and constantly changing.   I never know who will be in the driveway from hour to hour.   It’s like days in the college dormitory.

Having Adam and Susan, and Janie and Bert here is dangerous.   They are all full of ideas of places we might go, and schemes for making exotic trips possible.   We’re talking about the Yucatan Peninsula, South Africa, and Australia.   The dangerous part is not the destination, but the fact that our friends might actually pull off these trips with us coming along.   I know we’d love to do some overseas traveling if we could figure out how.

We have been notified that our last portion of kitchen countertops will be installed on Saturday, exactly 24 hours before we leave.   Talk about cutting it close to the wire.   Actually it’s far too late, because now we can’t get the final paint touchups and appliance installations done.   We plan to take a couple of days after Mexico to finalize what we can, and that will be it for this season.

I think at this point we are already mentally checked out of the house-renovation process. It would have been nice to have had it all done a month ago, but since it wasn’t we’ve turned our attention to other things.   The contractors and projects have been superseded by other suburban tasks, and soon this entire phase will fade away to a memory as we rejoin our lives as travelers.

For all the aggravation of renovating the house, I don’t regret it.   We have what we set out for: a safe, reliable, easily-maintained home base in a nice climate.   Our investment of time and money means it will be here to support us when we get back, or whenever we need it.   We know we’ll be comfortable here, and the door will always unlock for us.   It is not perfect but it will be home whenever the Airstream isn’t.   For   most people, that’s the ordinary situation but for us it’s a novelty.

I have a checklist of things we must do before we go.   The list has dwindled by half since Monday, but the rest will have to be tackled in the next 36 hours.   That means Saturday will be one more crazy day, as we move back into the Airstream and mothball the house, while overseeing the countertop installation and helping our guests stay busy with their own activities (sightseeing, etc).   It’s a lot of effort but fun at the same time.   I guess I prefer this sort of crazy to being sane and stable all the time.