Getting Ready

Sometimes it feels like all we are ever doing is getting ready for what's next. Ordering materials for the roofing and insulation. Talking to contractors and designers hammering out the details for plumbing, mechanical and electrical requirements. Finalizing business documents, designing a website, even changing the look of this blog so that it will match the future website (many thanks to Jim). Imagining the future but somehow never feeling like the future is here, now because we are planning for the next stage.

Fortunately there is one exception.

Getting ready for vacation! This week I am researching public transportation in Seattle and on the Baja, Mexico. Next week, Brian, Oliver and I will be there. This week we are making a list and putting together a loose pile of stuff to remember to bring: child life preserver, travel car seat, bathing suits, a few warm things for Washington, passports, a book for leisure reading, extra diapers, lots of airplane snacks... In one week we will drop almost all of our Talkeetna responsibilities, hop on a plane and get away from this cold, snowy wonderland for three whole weeks. Vacation is one of the few events we get ready for that actually arrives...and actually ends before we start planning the next one.

I couldn't be more ready for this vacation. We can't afford it and really shouldn't take the precious time away from moving forward on the bakery building. But any amount of sunny seventy degree weather we can absorb while traveling will most certainly energize us for all the getting ready that lies waiting for us at home.

It's impossible to know the number of hours I have spent getting ready for the grand opening of Flying Squirrel Bakery Cafe over the last ten years. And it's hard to imagine how much more getting ready I will do in the next five or six months. At some point, the future will be here. The cafe will be open. I will go to my job every day and just be doing it, living it, instead of always planning for it. Wow, that sounds good.

So, on this snowy Christmas and Chanukah day I am thinking more about the changes that Solstice brings. And the forward thinking as each day becomes lighter and a New Year is imminent. My New Year's Resolution: yes, get ready, keep planning, but feel how much the future has already come. As much as I look forward to many tomorrows, I am living right here, right now. Mexico here I come!


















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