Home for the Holidays

Just had a call from my dad, asking if we can try and get over for the school holidays in March/April to visit them. Well, the travel agent says it's already fully booked on every airline, but I managed to get an approximate cost out of them, between R13,000 and R15,000 for the two of us return.

Excluding the obvious fact that we don't really have that kind of cash lying around, it seems the only option would be to get permission for my son to miss school for two weeks and try get a flight during term-time.

I don't know if mom's health has taken a turn for the worse, or if it's just a "better now than too late" visit, as it's kinda hard to get info out of them at times. It just seems on the impossible scale of things.

And there's pet-care that would need organizing, and leave from work (fortunately it's a quiet time then), and all that kind of thing.

As much as we'd like to, I'm not sure we can manage it. And suddenly it feels like the weight of the world is back on my shoulders - worry about trying to get over, worry about the parents, about other visa issues (not sure we can even get a visitor's visa yet), how we could work this out, and guilt issues if we can't.

Listening to Evanescence isn't helping! :) They're not the cheeriest of bands...!

This isn't blogged about for solutions or anything, but rather for me to try figure things out in my head by typing them out, and to record today's journey ("dear diary"). Perhaps I should rather have done it offline than on. Sorry.