Caution: Road Ends in Six Months

We are almost to the end of the road here in England–this week marked the start of our PCS (Permanent Change of Station) countdown. Well, we can’t actually count anything yet, as we haven’t received our official release date, but we know it’s coming in about six months. At Tuesday’s departure briefing, we were handed a binder full of pre-move to-do lists, which is currently lying next to the sofa, waiting to be divvied up this weekend into his and her responsibilities. The days are flying by, yet I still have a whole list of my own to work through before I am forced back into the “real world” later this summer, and become slave once again to the demands of a full-time job. I’ve got high hopes that with steely determination, careful time management, and creative multi-tasking, I can cross off every item on the PCS checklists, as well as my own, before we set sail for the other side of the pond.

Places to See/Revisit

• Holland
• Brugge
• Northern Wales
• Iceland
• Paris
• Germany
• London
• Oxford
• Cotswold Villages
• Portsmouth (Mary Rose Museum)
• Sulgrave Manor
• Highclere Castle

Things to Do

• Organize/scrapbook Japan memorabilia
• Refinish chair
• Restore lantern
• Restore shoe last
• Organize pictures on computer
• Sort/purge documents on computer
• Purge emails
• Take class/renew teaching license
• Suss out job opportunities in US
• Polish horse brass collection
• Lose another 10 pounds
• Crochet Aran afghan
• Frame auction pictures
• Shadowbox antique Monopoly game
• Purge old magazines
• Import folder of recipe clippings into computer program
• Create inventory of household effects

Whew! That’s a lot of stuff to do! Not sure how I’ll fit it all in around the daily routine of work, laundry, house cleaning, cooking, and blogging, but I am determined not to leave England with a backlog of unfinished projects and a load of regret about not making the most of the time I had here. I’m about to buckle down and make the next six months ones I can look back on with pride and a sense of accomplishment. I’ll revisit this post from time to time to cross off completed items…feel free to nag, encourage, bully, and cheer in the weeks ahead!

Last Sunday while I was trolling The One Minute Writer‘s archives for something to spark my imagination, I came across “Six Word Saturdays,” an idea they had picked up from the weekly series over at Show My Face. The idea is to sum up your current situation in just six words, then expand as much or as little as desired.  TOMW hadn’t done a “Six Word Saturday” prompt since July of last year, but I thought that starting today I would adopt it as my own end-of-week tradition–an easy, no-stress way to wrap up the blogging week. Lo and behold, when I clicked over to TOMW this evening, today’s prompt is “Six Word Saturday!” Great minds think alike. 🙂