This useless slack-jawed snake will not do its job.
I swear to Odin, the first thing I am going to do when I get to Scandinavia is go find the iCloud. I presume it’s up that way somewhere, around the top of the world. Surely that’s where you’d put it. Then I am going to go through it and figure out if any of my photos are really in it and if not why not.
I’ve spent hours trying to back up and sync and download and delete and free up space on my phone and my computer so I can go overseas and fill them both up again, but the Jobs are conspiring against me. It’s almost as if the universe is telling me that that I will have no one to blame but myself when I arrive in one of the most beautiful parts of the world and cant take any pictures of it, because I haven’t deleted a single email in seven years and haven’t edited any photos ever. It’s almost as if the technological world is judging me for taking so bloody many pictures and videos of my kids.
So on the electronics section of my Getting Ready To Go checklist I am doing very poorly. Very much Below Expectations. I was planning to download some TV shows to watch on the plane, but that doesn’t look likely because computer says no. I will be left with only the TV offered by the airline, which in my experience is usually nine hundred episodes of The Big Bang Theory.
In that instance I will be forced to read a proper book, which will be very hard because my hand is only used to the weight of an iPhone and I will most likely arrive in Helsinki with a badly strained wrist from holding up a four hundred page novel. Other Jess will have to do all the door opening and greeting the locals and spooning water onto the sauna coals and other hand-based activities and it will be all Apple’s fault. I probably won’t be able to lift anything heavier than a cardamom bun.
The safest thing to do would be to chop up a copy of a Wallender novel into twelve parts, each the same weight as my phone, and read them one by one like early learner chapter books.
And because my phone will still be full of pictures of Garnet and May Blossom, I will have to write descriptions of everything I see instead of capturing it on film, so my slide night when I come home will be me sitting there saying ‘Flat field, quite a big sky.’ ‘Arctic fox outside the ABBA Museum.’ ‘Really old buildings all squashed up together; none painted the same colour.’ ‘Selfie with Per from Roxette.’ ‘Plate of beige smoked fish with a potato.’
You’re probably thinking that I could just delete some of these photos and videos, but you would be wrong, because I actually cannot delete images of my children. In my brain I know that by deleting a photo it’s not in fact erasing them from the planet, frame by frame, but my heart and my deleting finger disagree. Anyway, what if I’m on the trip and I suddenly need to see the video of May Blossom at the age of two singing ‘Do-Re-Mi’? Or the one of Garnet at six months old eating in the car, gripping a half-peeled avocado and gnawing toothlessly away at the top like a little possum? I’m not trying to scare anyone, but I actually think I might require those things to survive. There’s a chance I’m a bit apprehensive about leaving my little family.
They, on the other hand, have all had quite enough of me bursting into tears whenever they do something cute, like look at me or touch my hand or wallop each other, and cannot wait for me to get my embarrassing weepy self out of the House of Fun and onto the plane so they can all get on with having a proper good time without me. So rude.
I must turn my mind to more pressing matters now, including packing. Specifically what to do about the fact that it turns out Other Jess and I are planning to wear the same jumper on the plane. Not the same in the sense that we each own jumpers that look the same, but the same actual jumper in the sense that I own it and she currently has possession of it. There is only one jumper. Other Jess argues that since she just sewed up twenty-five moth holes in it she should wear it on the plane. I will reluctantly defer to her judgement on this one, since if the jumper were in my possession it would still be full of holes and would likely stymie any chance we have of an upgrade.
Come on please, the next fifty-odd hours. You can hurry along as much as you please.
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