Sometimes? Somethings are Clichés for a reason.

I really really wish I had another way to phrase my outlook on life at the moment. But the annoying, vapid cliché keeps coming back and tapping me on the shoulder (Hi! I may be annoying but I make an irritating amount of sense ... c'mon ...) and I end up saying that at the moment I am very much in the mindset of :

Feel the fear ...



And do it anyway



(Please note that I am not aiming wildly into the air. It's called recoil damnit!)

It is annoying and clingy and I cannot get rid of it.
But while I am very scared about moving away (did you know? when I moved out home I moved just a 10 minute walk away?) for an extended holiday, that I need to pretend that I am not scared and just DO IT ANYWAY. Because it will be so enormously worth it.





(It already kind of is.)



Thankfully I am going away with a man who looks like a puppy:



I get to shoot a gun! A gun, baby! A Gun!

And who has little fear.



Pop! pop pop pop pop pop pop p- Oo I'm out.

But who gives me the courange to shoot a gun.




I really hope the gunshot residue (smells like fireworks!) is gone by Monday. Otherwise travelling might become very interesting ...

And I watch another white dash, another white dash, another white dash fly beside us ...

We pulled out of my parents' driveway and I had my hand pressed against my face. The radio was playing (seriously) an R.E.M. song:

It's the end of the world as we know it.
It's the end of the world as we know it.
It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.

(seriously!)

Craig just looked at me and changed the station.



I had hoped that living with my family for a month would have made it easier to leave them, but it really didn't. Driving away I took stock and realised that I'm wearing a bracelet that one sister made, another shares my stretched earrings, we all wear our mother's face and our father's sense of humour. They're with me.

(We left Wellington at just after 10am and arrived in Auckland with a wheeze of tyres just after 9pm. I had a lot of time to think).



It's unfortunate. Driving up the North Island under mary-blue skies and animal clounds, between Colin McCahon hills all I can think is how beautiful this country is. And we're leaving it!







(poor little car)







(There were many many hours spent in the car with not much to do.)



As we were leaving Taupo I started crying (I was on edge most of the day) and it started to rain. Even though we could see blue sky out the windows the rain was beating down.
Craig looked over at me and joked "Maybe it's you" & I laughed. Just then the rain stopped.

It was a day of strange coincidences, the start of a new month and the end of the world as we knew it.
Besides the tender aubergine bruise of missing family I am getting hugely excited. This is actually happening!
If you plan something for more than a year and a half it starts to take on mythic proportions.




Oh and can I just tell you that Twitter is a lifesaver? I've managed to get all of my family set up (and I'm about to bully Craig into it as well) which meant that yesterday, as I was travelling up the country I was able to update many people at once about what I was doing.
I've always felt that I'm closer to the people I don't have to "recap" my life for. I lovelovelove being able to let people know about the cute shoes I saw in a little boutique, or that a great hair day was wasted on a car journey (What? it was Really annoying) without having to dredge my recent history in order to fill an email with a mainly-boring-&-formulaic recap email.
Anyway. Twitter is adorable and I love it! I tweet! (this can also be seen in the little grey box on the left hand side of my website)

http://www.twitter.com/ohdarling