I think work is not quite prepared for me to be gone for much of the next month, but gone I shall be. The husband has a work thing in London week after next and I am tagging along this time (unlike his New Zealand trip). I’ll have a couple of days to myself to play tourist while he’s busy with work, and we’re taking a couple of days on either side of the work stuff to play tourist together. First time in Europe for both of us, though of course I’ve lived in Asia (Taiwan), and he’s been to NZ. Looking forward to the trip, but tired of all of the prep work at this point (cat care, shopping for different chargers, etc.).
Then a few days after we get back we’re back on the road, this time down to southern Texas where my parents settled around the start of the pandemic. I haven’t been to see them since they moved, and dragged my brother and his family with them. I did get a chance to see my brother’s family before they moved, but the parents (who were already snowbirds, traveling each winter) had settled already. And of course when the pandemic hit I couldn’t fly down, or even drive down, and momentum and resentment of them moving to the middle of bloody nowhere has meant it’s been far too long since I’ve seen them all. While I’m looking forward to seeing them, I’m not looking forward to the plane trips, since the last and first legs will be on puddle jumpers to the tiny airport where they live. That and that the whole Texas trip is more expensive than flying to and staying in London (because they live in the middle of nowhere). But hey, the place was/is cheap for their cost of living, so you suck it up. Even as you resents the fact that they used to live within driving distance for a day/weekend trip.
Cultural whiplash, for certain.