Less than 10 weeks to go!
And we are not ready.
Psychologically, we’ve been ready for years. Though the trip certainly doesn’t feel real yet.
But in practical terms? I can’t begin to wrap my head around how much there is to do: Everything we need to do for the trip, everything we need to do so that we have lives to return to… and then there’s the house. Getting the house empty, or at least ready for potential renters to look at, has been the top priority, pushing everything else aside. But it turns out – to no one’s surprise — that clearing out years of stuff is not a weekend project. It doesn’t help that our tons of extra furniture is stuffed with things like sweaters from the 80’s with the tags still on them, or that my room full of filing cabinets has my nursery school report cards and cancelled checks (remember those?) from ’92 when I lived in California.
Pre-Filte Fish
So, naturally, yesterday was the ideal time to make gefilte fish, for the first time ever. From scratch – as in, whole fish. (But not carp – I used striped bass and trout). This meant, of course, that I first had to go to youtube to learn how to filet, bone, and skin both kinds of fish. (There’s an 11 year old who’s really good at it, though he makes a bloody mess, and not in the British sense.) This is the problem with reading the Times: they always con me into some kind of ridiculous culinary project, so I don’t have time to read the paper itself. “40 minutes, including cooking time… not the whole day it used to take your grandmother.” (For us, it was about the fresh horseradish, not the fish – it was the only time at my grandmother’s that food from a jar was fine, although we insisted on “whitefish and pike,” not the alarmingly vague “gefilte fish.”)
4 hours later, the fish cakes were cooling in the second fridge. (“The beer fridge” when it’s not Passover.) At least I’d already ground the horseradish the day before. I did, at least, have a fantastic fish stock of fennel and fish heads left from the poaching. A sprint to Trader Joes for two pounds of cod and two cups of heavy cream, and we had a cook’s lunch of bisque for dinner.
Which was very tasty, but did absolutely nothing to get us ready for the Passover Seder or get the house cleaned out for our (still hypothetical) renters, much less get us visa’d, vaccinated, insured, equipped, or even ticketed for this trip.
Which is why, of course, Ethan and I have been spending our “free” hours (ie, homework and housework hours) cramming for the scuba diving course we just started. That way we can guarantee no progress on the critical path for at least another three weeks. And as a bonus, we finally found something more expensive than skiing (which was needed, since we’ll be following summer around the world and our only time on skis will be in Dubai.)
But at least I’m passing on important life lessons to my son: he’s learned the art of double-dipping, recording his studying of the scuba textbook for his daily homework reading requirement. Finally some efficiency!