countdown!

It has suddenly occurred to me that tomorrow is June 1st and we are leaving at the end of June for the conference. I feel like I should run upstairs and start packing now!

Actually, I really want to pick out my knitting project for at the conference. I've been participating - okay, mostly just lurking - on a knitting discussion list on the LLL CN. I want to have something cool and fun to show off, but also portable. I bought Vivian Hoxbro's Domino Knitting in February and have yet to knit something from it. I think it will be the perfect sized project for the airplane. I can just bring some small circumference circular needles and cotton yarn. No fuss, no muss, nothing confiscated! Hopefully this time I won't leave my knitting accessories bag on an airplane headed for France. Oops.

It's funny, isn't it. I start thinking about something productive like packing and my mind turns immediately to thoughts of knitting. I guess you all know what I do when I'm supposed to be doing other things now.

conference with a kid

My husband and son are coming with me to the conference this year. My husband didn't want to sign up for any sessions, but we did get him a registration so that he will be able to use the playroom with my son. We may haved lived in the DC area for 6 (me) and 3 (him) years, but we have grown accustomed to the cooler, less humid summers in California and neither one of us are looking forward to experiencing it again.

To avoid most of the heat I think Erik will be taking Niels to the national mall to visit the Air and Space Museum and the Natural History Museum. I am hoping that those two places will keep them occupied for at least two days. I am actually expecting that they will be able to spend two days in Air and Space alone, but that might be expecting much for a three year old.

Niels' birthday conicides with the conference. He is allergic to dairy, so I have looked up where the closest Whole Foods is to the hotel. (Except I think it's actually a Fresh Fields.) At any rate, I will be walking over there to get food for Niels and I to eat, so I am hoping to be able to order a dairy free cake for his birthday too! I usually bake his cakes, and can substitute for the dairy. I'm feeling slightly guilty that I'll be distracted from him on his birthday, so I need to do something to make it special. Motherly guilt is a powerful thing.

anticipation

I am really looking forward to attending the conference in DC. Part of the reason we are going is that we used to live there, and we were able to combine the trip with a visit to my brother's family near Philadelphia. I am going to have to come up with other reasons why we need to go to the 2007 conference in Chicago, since we don't know anyone there.

We are arriving early and will be visiting friends a bit before the conference starts. I am also signed up for a preconference workshop on career paths to becoming an IBCLC. As of this moment, with my almost-three-year-old toddler, I can not imagine having a job again, but I think it will take me several years to make it down the path to where I feel comfortable taking the exam. Perhaps by the time I am ready to take the exam, I will also be ready to work outside of the home again. As they say, I will cross that bridge when I come to it.

In April 2003 I attended our area conference. At that point I was stalled in my leader application process and feeling uncertain about whether I was going to be able to be an effective leader. The conference was such a wonderful experience that it convinced me that I had to become a leader, so that I could continue to be around people like the leaders I met at the conference, and so that I had a reason to continue to attend events such as our area conference. I expect that I will come back from the International Conference equally jazzed about LLL, if not more so. Who knows, maybe it will get me off my butt to do some of the fundraising I keep thinking we should do!