Two nights before began the packing.
I threw a bunch of stuff together that I thought would be good for a 16-day trip. A bunch of shorts, a bunch of T-shirts and a bunch of collared shirts. I figured we’d sift through them when it got to “go time”. We also spent half the night looking for my Magellan fishing shirt from Academy Sports. In the back of my mind I kinda thought I may had seen it, but couldn’t be sure. I never open anything when it comes in the mail, especially clothes because I hate trying on clothes. I finally told Jean that they hadn’t delivered it, even though I had an email confirmation stating that it had been left in the fucking mailbox, or around it. I denied ever seeing it. I even called Academy to see if they had really sent it. They said they did, but gave me a credit for it since I had claimed it never came. I turned the house upside down looking for it, in the process uncovering a bunch of shirts I had ordered from King Size months ago in addition to empty carcasses of mailing pouches that had contained God-knows-what. It was nowhere to be found. Meanwhile, Jean had a mile high pile of clothes, medicines, home remedies and various comfort accessories for travel spread all over the futon in the “office”. I kept seeing a grey shirt with a rolled up cuff sticking out of the bunch that looked a little familiar, but ignored it every time I looked there. And I went back to that pile to search again and again.
It all came to a head when I discovered a packing list on the dining room table. (Yes, the same dining room table that houses Jean’s NextHome office, the vast array of special holistic dog medicines and remedies, and thousands of sheets of spent paper from the printer/scanner by Epson. When company is imminent, it is all frantically swept away and located in places unknown until it is uncovered in another fiscal year.) The packing list indicated that the shirt had not only been delivered, it had been opened. Uh oh. Another cruise through the bowels of our stuff was in the offing. I ended up in the office again and stared at the massive pile on the futon. There was that grey sleeve sticking out from all the stuff that triggered a faint recollection in my addled brain. I extracted it from the pile. AHA! It was my shirt! It slid out silkily, because it was 110% polyester or some other fabric not known to man. After all, it was a fishing shirt designed to repel anything that got near it, including water, fish guts and old sunscreen. I noticed that one of the sleeves had been rolled up to demonstrate the versatility of the shirt. “I think I may remember doing that,” I thought, as I clutched the completion of my safari wardrobe to my chest. I had also ordered two pairs of shorts and a pair of long pants that also zipped away into shorts—all made of the same unearthly material. It took a lot of convincing to persuade Jean to let me claim the shirt. She swore it was hers.
A couple of weeks before the trip, we had gone to one of those trip doctors that give you all your shots and advise you on any medical calamities that may befall you at your destination. We spent over 400 bucks on shots, medicine, diarrhea-emergency kits, malaria pills, and any other medications that could possibly be needed in the darkest of Africa. A lot of the countries there require that you show proof of your inoculations. As IF! Who’s afraid of whom, disease-wise?
We also got some lethal spray for our safari clothes that would combat mosquitoes and other flying insects of any kind. No critters were gonna pierce OUR delicate skin with their lethal germs. Spraying the clothes was pretty funny. The process is supposed to be done on a windless day, but being as I stalled as long as I could before spraying the clothes, it had to be done in a peppy, windy atmosphere. The instructions indicated that the spray was under no circumstances to touch your skin, eyes, mouth, etc. If it did, flushing with gallons of water followed by hour-long showers and 24 hours quarantine were required. Of course the spray got on my bare legs. I threw some water on them and wiped it off with a paper towel. I was counting on the fact that the directions were riddled with needless hyperbole. They were.