In 1971, Carly Simon wrote her song “Anticipation”, and only a few years later Heinz used the song in their iconic “slow ketchup” television commercials.

I’m feeling more and more like the child waiting for the ketchup these days.

We’re waiting to see whether enough countries open to tourists to allow our world cruise to take place – especially Australia and New Zealand, where we’re currently scheduled to spend 3 weeks.

We’re waiting to see whether my AstraZeneca vaccinations will be deemed acceptable in all the countries on our itinerary – especially the United States, through whose airports we need to transfer.

In the event either of those things turn out to be problems, we’d need to find a place, or places, to spend January through mid May. When COVID hit, we had to cancel our plans for a winter moving around between Portugal, Spain, Germany, and Cyprus; maybe we’d try to recreate those plans. Or maybe we’d head to Mexico. Myrtle Beach would typically be our backup plan, but … AstraZeneca. The current U.S. non-acceptance of my “fully vaccinated” status might change. We’re waiting.

We’re also waiting to decide where we’ll spend spring and summer of 2022. Normally I’d have everything booked 12-18 months in advance (and we do have December 2022 to mid April 2023 reserved in Merida, Mexico – unless we end up there this winter instead) but until we know for sure where we’re spending the winter, we won’t know when we’ll return and need a “home” here.

We’re waiting for good news about international vaccine rollouts. We’re waiting for travel approvals. We’re waiting for border openings. We’re waiting for email status reports from Viking Ocean Cruises. We’re waiting for September, which is our timeline to apply for tourist visas for the countries (like Egypt, India, Jordan, Oman, Turkey, Vietnam and, surprisingly, Australia) in which Canadian passports alone are not enough.

We’re waiting for the ketchup.

Anticipation.

https://youtu.be/Vr9m6pEZNJI