Twenty Beds. Wednesday September 8th, 2010

I am currently sitting in the Continental airline’s lounge at Newark with a glass of champagne by my side and promising myself that before I board the plane I will have posted this blog.

I left Brazil on July 27th, more than 6 weeks ago, and I haven’t been home since. Whoever claimed that the jet set life is glamorous is an outright liar, unless of course you have the luxury of private jets, chauffer driven cars (come back Marcelo all is forgiven) and someone to pack and unpack. Well, Marcelo doesn’t count because I left him in Brazil so I have been chief organizer, packer, loader/unloader and driver.

The title of this blog is “twenty beds” and anyone that has done this type of travelling can empathise with me when I say that in the past 6 weeks; this is the number of times I have changed locations to sleep. Imagine packing and unpacking that many times to say nothing of loading and unloading the rental cars – of which I had 5.

Okay, I need to explain. We were always planning to go to the UK this summer for a family wedding, but the weekend after the family wedding, there was another wedding in Belgium and, as we were so close, it seemed madness not to go. I also planned a 50th birthday party for Steve for 80 of our closest family and friends at a place that I had never heard of, let alone visited.

Even the first leg of the journey, ( Sao Paulo to Newark) meant that I could spend 10 hours in the Princeton area and managed to fill the time with trips to the hairdressers, doctors, Motor Vehicle to get a new driving license, Barnes and Noble to pick up summer reading, have passport photographs taken for the children’s new passports, visited the bank to sort out a credit card for my college bound son and finally a trip to a friend’s house to drop 3 bags that we need State side but not in the UK. I was exhausted before I took the next leg of the trip from the USA to the UK.

As soon as I landed, I picked up a rental car and headed to see an old friend who was only in town that day. It would have been easier to give into the jet lag and not bother, but here is the nub of expat living. It has to be the one that goes away to make the effort to stay in touch with everyone “back home”. No one ever knows when we are going to be around, so unless we are the ones to make the effort, it is all too easy to fall into the “out of sight, out of mind” mentality.

So although it has been an exhausting trip, getting our son into University, our daughter back to boarding school, visiting 2 colleges for our daughter, 10 days in Maine, trips to Boston on the way there and back, 2 trips to Washington DC and a few days in Princeton I feel a huge sense of achievement for having planned and expedited the whole thing with only very minor glitches.

I managed a game of bridge, the first for several months, more coffees, afternoon teas; lunches and dinners than are good for my waistline but I actually enjoyed every minute of it. We attended a gallery opening in Philadelphia, managed to melt the plastic on my credit card with all the shoppping and survived with only two suitcases of clothes. Thank you to everyone that helped plan all of the above – I loved seeing all of you and am only sorry that I didn’t get to see everyone.

That said, by the end of last week my 15 year old daughter and I were constantly saying “I can’t wait for next Wednesday”. Even Steve admitted to me that “he is ready for me to come home”. I think 4 weeks of fending for himself is more than enough.

Tomorrow I will hit the ground running to pick up my life in Brazil. There is a committee meeting of the charity I am helping out with, but I think I will be too late for that. But Steve has arranged Bridge for Thursday evening; we have a reception for Friday evening and dinner on Saturday with friends. Oh and a concert on Sunday afternoon. I will walk the dog, tackle the laundry and hit the supermarket.

I have to say, for all the exhaustion I plead, I wouldn’t change a minute of it.