Days 356 to (365) – Sat Oct 24 to Sat Oct 31 – And so it ends…

In spite of my checking – and occasional double-checking – of my day counts, I’ve managed to lose a day. In fact, the whole year of our Longest-Date-Ever, travelling from here to there, we’ve managed to only lose the following: one debit card (mine), one Cobber (Pierre’s), one day of activities in Thailand, a few pens, a couple of short-sleeved shirts, our tempers (a few times) and one day of our year-less-a-day count. That’s a better track record for me than usual.

We spent our last week doing a mix of things. I assist my friend Melanie while she shoots a wedding on Day 356. We help out with the kids a bit, babysitting here and there, and after a particularly successful day, Pierre and I celebrate with our version of a high-five: we make fists and clink our wedding rings together. This, I think, was born both from reading/watching too many comics/cartoons (rings of power!) as well as from often, though not always, being high-five people. Either way, the clink is very satisfying though it’s taken us a while to get the knack of lining up our fingers properly to make it work every time.

For our last week of our year off, we “house sit” (read: couch surf) at another friend’s house while she’s away on vacation, and try to take care of a few details of our life in Canada. We renew our health cards just before they expire, meet friends to have dinner and catch up in person, and sign the papers for our new apartment.

I scrupulously procrastinate working on the blog, though I’m several months of posts behind. As much as I’m not in a hurry to get back to the office and start working, blog-wise I’m looking forward to the end of our vacation day count. For the whole trip, every time I get caught up on the blog, time keeps moving on and on and then suddenly I’m weeks in the hole again. And with the lack of photographs for the Russia leg of the journey it’s even more daunting. Still, I know I’ll eventually wrap things up.

Pierre continues to mourn the loss of the Russia photos and, whenever I work on the blog, he gets a bit sad. Especially when he notices my notes where I’ve listed the ID numbers of photos I had already selected to cut and paste into specific parts of the narrative.

“I thought of another one we lost,” he says. “Remember in Suzdal, that pic where the two beams of light illuminated the two small figures in the painting?” He pauses. “That was a really good one, too.”

I’m sympathetic, but eventually break down and start offering sympathy with a chaser of practicality.

“Why don’t you start doing something useful every time you feel bad about the pics,” I suggest, trying to link into something he already does. “If you did 10 pushups every time you dwelt on it, you’d increase the number of pushups you can do like crazy.”

The idea is not pursued and sporadic mourning continues.

On what my notebook says is Day 363, but which is really Day 365, we pack up our bags and head back to Mel and Al’s to man the door for Hallowe’en and to get ready for our first week back at work.

We’ve done an informal countdown to this day all week. It's not that we're sad about it being over – we enjoyed ourselves far too much to be sad - we’re simply aware that something major is wrapping up. We haven’t really planned anything special to mark it. After a quick hug we start to pick up our bags. Pierre stops.

“Best date ever,” he says and smiles.

We clink rings.