26 days. :)

That's it. 26 days till I'm off on my adventure. I can feel the excitement all the way down to my toes. I know this because I've started dressing for warmer weather and am quite stunned when I'm met with a blast of cold air as I leave the house. I guess it's not time to put away the winter coat yet.

On Monday, I began a three week business course at the local community college. Before I even had a germ of an idea in my head about going to Hawaii (or rather, others had that germ of an idea), I signed up for this. I figured I had nothing to lose, could do something to pass the time, and put something new on my resume. The course was how to begin your own animal business. Everyone who knows me knows I love animals. Dogs are number 1, but hell, I'll even snuggle with my cousin's rat or two.

Getting paid to do what you love? Why not? It's every one's dream. I will say that the class was kind of disappointing for me. I say for me because the instructor was wonderful. She told us about her dog walking business and how she got started 6 years ago. Through her hard work, she now makes enough to support herself and her three new employees. I got a cold, hard dose of reality however. She also told us of the sacrifice’s she had to make. She walks up to 11 miles a day with the animals. She now has bad knees and a bad back. She spoke of breaking up dog fights. Due to my Cerebral Palsy and Scoliosis, I already have a bad back and weak legs. She was concerned that I wouldn't be able to handle walking the dogs, although she did come up with a solution down the road for me: Hire employees to walk the dogs while I took care of their inside needs. That still left questions on what to do in the meantime. I'll admit, I get frustrated from time to time. When your mind works, and your body kind of doesn't, it's like a war. If it were up to me, I would have started something like this years ago. While she was going over networking your business I thought: "I already know this! This is great!" My mind immediately started spinning: Google, Facebook fan page to place clients’ dogs’ photos up. A wall where they could chat. Webcams, "Doggy/kitty of the week", Twitter. Fliers to place in vets offices. My mind was there. If it were up to me, I would happily walk those dogs, rain, shine, sleet, snow, whatever. I know this sounds crazy, but I LOVED taking care of my dogs. Feeding them, playing with them, making sure the bowls and everything was clean. Hell, with the little money that I had, Noah was on a special diet so his hypoglycemia wouldn't overcome him and his skin allergies wouldn't make him miserable. And I had to really SEARCH for that food. You couldn't get it at the grocery store. Hell, you couldn't even get it at PetSmart or Petco. It was either a mom and pop pet store, online, or from the vet.

At any rate, I knew that I would have to adjust my plans to work in the field. I wasn't going to write it off entirely, but if I did work with animals, it had to be where I wouldn't sacrifice my health to get there.

In other news, everything is drawing near, I keep forgetting that not only do I have the task of packing for a four month trip to tackle; I'm moving at the same time.

Things to do:

Wash the car, get oil change, get spare key.
Sell things I don't want/need (or give away, I don't care)
Organize and pack belongings I won't need with me. Put in storage.

Packing for trip checklist:

-Medication & Medical Supplies
-Toiletries
-Camera, video camea, laptop
-Clothing (I'm buying a lot of summer clothing because everything I own is just worn out or doesn't...um...fit well anymore)

Am I missing anything? Or do ya think I'm all set? :)