Reisefieber

I have forced myself to take a "time-out" (oh yes, a 'PB' trip again!) because I've been quietly worrying for some time now and I can't seem to shake the underlying anxiety off.  I'm making lists, ticking off what I can as soon as I can, but some things are simply out of my hands.  And I can't quite discern where all this worry is coming from but I sense it's probably just ,,Reisefieber" - that pre-travel anxiety you get when you realise you've got to get a tonne of things done before you leave for a long journey.  (Or it could just be my Mum's genes and her terrible propensity for worry gone into overdrive due to my coming off the pill for the seven days off, which causes hormonal free-fall.)

I'm pretty sure the journey itself is going to leave me feeling almost dead and I'm only talking about getting from here to Chicago.  The horrendous 4am wake-up call and 5am check-in added to the four-hour wait in Amsterdam before actually getting on a plane bound for Chicago is what might be the end of me.  That coupled with general, 'did I meet all the necessary international flight requirements this time?' stress, is bound to send my cortisol levels through the roof. 

The thing about travelling from Europe to the States is that the jet-lag isn't too bad to get over on the way there, because the time change takes you back, so when you arrive, you can just try to kid yourself that it was a shorter journey than you thought, make it through till evening and then crash and wake up the next day on US time.  Except, on this occasion, we won't be arriving anywhere near evening and will have to survive a whole afternoon without collapsing to make it through to the evening before we can go to bed.  So it'll be a bit of a challenge.

But that's just the beginning of the trip.  The rest could involve similar challenges in staying awake / dealing with anxiety, being that we're driving across to California, aiming to end up in San Francisco for the final 5-6 days of our trip.  Ironically enough, as I sat down to have my coffee and pain au chocolat in P's bakery again, the first song that came on was the one with the line, "if you're going to San Francisco..." to which I smiled to myself and thought, "yes I am!'  

I have since checked this song on You Tube and found that it's a really hippy 'Mamas and the Papas' song all about flowers and love-ins and I feel a bit nauseous now.  I have a sneaking suspicion, that despite my excitement, there'll be a little part of me that will miss Prague while I'm away and I could find myself longing for a bit of European dress sense, or culture, or even a bit of the resigned pessimism and expert moaning that you just can't get in the US without being a hardened New Yorker.

There's a line in the film "Truly, Madly, Deeply" (which happens to be one of my favourite films) where the Polish guy Titus, says, "A man should never drink, he remembers only his country, his mother, his lovers".  In my state today, I think I need to re-phrase that to, "A woman should never come off the pill, she remembers only her worries, her insecurities and while watching 'Outnumbered' later, her daytrips to 'Rabbit World' with her ex-partner..."  It's tragic what a loss of progesterone and estrogen or whatever the damned contraceptive pill consists of, does to you.  I am most definitely calling it a day now and packing myself off to an early bed with girlie videos and cups of tea, and a small ration of chocolate, because I need to lose weight before I go to America so that its sweetened food doesn't entirely annihilate my body with unavoidable fat and carbohydrates.  Hmm.  Chocolate rationing at a time like this.  Tough-going...