Okay.

So I am fairly notorious for never being properly prepared for a trip.  But this time?  This time it’s like… extra bad.

Let’s just say we’re T-minus 3 hours from leaving our house, and we still have not packed, I haven’t sufficiently broken in my plane ridin’ jeans (since I failed to buy a decent pair of plane pants), my camera battery isn’t charged, I barely speak any Spanish, and I still don’t know the exchange rate from U.S. dollars to Euros.

Assuming Spain jumped on that whole European Union bandwagon.

The problem is that it never really feels like a trip is actually going to happen until the plane is burning rubber on the tarmac and I kiss the ground goodbye.  (Although let’s hope the plane doesn’t actually burn rubber on the tarmac.  I can’t imagine that would be good.)  This mentality makes it awfully difficult to actually remove items I might need from my bathroom and closet and place them in various bags for transport.

Add to that the fact that only a day or two after we arrive in Malaga, we’ll be heading off on Ryan Air with only strictly size-regulated carry-on bags to spend the majority of our trip on the islands of Ibiza and Formentera.  In fact, the only reason we’re bringing a checked bag (or two) at all is so that we have plenty of room to bring home the maximum allotment of bottles of Spanish wine and other food souvenirs.  This means that we basically need to fit everything — including my DSLR and 2 lenses — into two small backpacks.

In case you’re new here, this is what I packed for 2 months in Costa Rica:

See that nice, green bag on the left?  That won’t be coming.  It’s too big.

See that black bag on the right?  That’s the bag that’s supposed to fit all of my camera gear, my swimsuits, probably underwear, possibly toiletries, and anything else we can manage to stuff inside.  Then, the rest of our clothes, shoes, and my purse will have to fit inside a second, similarly sized backpack.

Two bags.  Period.  No exceptions.

And I’m actually mildly concerned that backpack might be on the large-side.  I’ll have to measure.

So you can see why someone who normally procrastinates on packing anyway might be particularly intimidated in this scenario.

Oh, well.  I suppose if space gets really tight, we can throw out some of Justin’s clothes, because it’s not like I’d ever leave the camera behind.

Speaking of leaving things behind, I’m bringing my Netbook for use on the plane and maybe a bit in Malaga, but it’s very unlikely that I’ll be taking it to the islands.  This means that I might be sparse on blog posts for a bit, but I promise I’ll make up for it upon our return to reliable internet connections.

That said, I wrote a guest post that will be featured on the blog Simply Solo this Tuesday (5/31), so I really, really hope you go over there and check it out.

Muchas Grassy-ass!