My first holiday of the summer, a four-day jaunt out of town for a friend’s wedding, is fast approaching and my stress level is on the rise.
Why is it that getting ready for a holiday, be it for four days or four weeks, seems to be so stressful that it’s almost not worth taking time off in the first place?
Is it possible that I think I’m too busy to take summer holidays?
That’s a sad and pathetic commentary on my life but I’ll save that thought for another time.
I simply don’t have time right now to think about the bigger picture when my list of things to do is more than a page long and it just keeps getting longer.
There’s all the laundry and the dry cleaning, the house that needs to get cleaned, the recycling that should taken to the depot before we go, the movie that should go back and the knapsacks that need to be pulled out from the crawl space.
Wedding shoes need to get shined, the plane tickets need to be taken care of (I’m still not 100 per cent sure if this is ticketless travel) and of course there’s the small matter of the wedding present that has yet to be addressed.
Because it’s a wedding I also have a whole host of grooming details that must be attended to as well.
I have a general theory that if my feet are going to suffer in heels for eight hours during the wedding, they should at least look good and so a pedicure is an essential part of my pre-wedding routine.
A haircut would be nice with perhaps a few highlights and of course, I’ll need to make a quick pit stop at the Mystic Tan just to get that healthy summer-kissed glow from the fake spray tan.
I realize there’s a certain irony in that but when your legs are as ghostly white as mine you tend not to worry too much about the irony.
The Mystic Tan also does a great job in covering all the bruises and welts on my legs from my recent mountain biking mishaps.
Getting ready for a wedding is one of the only times I get a little girlie – some may say that I tend to go a little overboard.
But I digress.
That list alone could keep me busy over the next three days. But there’s also the issue of interviews and articles that need to get done, emails that still need to be answered and phone calls returned.
I think it’s safe to say that the next 48 hours are going to be long and stressful and I won’t be fully relaxed until I’m sipping a gin and tonic in the airport bar, waiting for my flight.
I already have this sneaking suspicion that I’ll be packing my laptop on this trip and working on some freelance articles on the plane.
Ah well, the words are sure to flow a little more freely with a stiff gin in my hand.
With all this preparation madness you would think I’m heading to some far-flung exotic locale where they don’t have shoe polish, hairdressers or dry cleaning facilities.
Instead, I’m going to Regina.
You hear of people getting married on the beaches of Hawaii or the Caribbean. Some even head off as far as Thailand.
Our friends chose Regina.
So I’m heading to the capital of Saskatchewan, the heart of Prairie country, smack dab in the middle of Canada.
I drove by it on the way to B.C. two and a half years ago and at that time I never ever thought that I would be spending part of my summer holidays there.
I suppose, on the brighter side of things, this wedding is a good excuse to see a little more of the country because let’s face it, I would never willingly book a ticket to Regina just for a holiday.
I’m really trying my hardest to be open-minded about the trip and not let my Upper Canadian, Toronto-centric snobbery get the better of me.
In fact, I never actually thought I was a Toronto snob. But when I talk about this trip, I can’t help but roll my eyes and give a little shudder.
Usually I’m fairly open-minded and excited about travelling to new places, learning new things, and exploring the ins and outs of another place.
But there’s just nothing cool about this place. Is there?
It just doesn’t have the cowboy cachet of Calgary, the maritime merriment of Halifax or the old-world charm of Quebec City.
As far as Canadian capital cities go, Regina, in my mind at least, seems to be one of the least appealing places to spend part of your summer.
I presume it’ll be flat and hot and, dare I say it…boring.
The highlight so far is that there’s a water slide in the Travel Lodge where we’re staying. I haven’t been down a water slide since I was ten so I suppose that’ll be fun.
On second thought, packing my laptop may not be such a bad idea after all. Regina could be a place where I can get a lot of work done without the usual Whistler distractions of camping, mountain biking and Citta’s patio.
Still, I hear the RCMP school is there. Every Mountie in the country has spent at least six months in Regina getting trained.
Apparently there’s a museum too detailing the history of Canada’s Mounties and a noon-day parade in dress uniform.
Ever since he heard the news my boyfriend has been trying to book tee off times for noon so it looks like I’ll be learning about the Mounties on my own.
As for the rest of Regina… I guess that remains to be seen.
