'you must be getting excited'.

My answer to this commonly asked question is usually: 'excited and terrified'.

I have a vision of us moored off a palm fringed beach. Roo and Cookie kicking around on the sailing dinghy, zipping from one yacht to the next, picking up new friends from the other boats and being fiercely independant and fabulous. In my vision, the kids are a bit older, never bicker, can swim like olympians, and one in particular doesn't freak out if her toe gets stuck in her undies hole as she's trying to put them on.... . They are tanned and handsome (I know, there's nothing healthy about a tan), polite and loving, and they completely can't get enough of their new life. Xave & I are loving being together, I'm as thin as a rake of course, and each dusk, we meet up on different yachts with new friends for sundowners. Excited.

The reality may be something different.

The kids can't quite swim like olympians - although Lynette is doing a brilliant job teaching Roo - Cooks thinks she can, and is frighteningly full of bravado, but forgets that she has lungs. They are too young to take the sailing dinghy out, and they get along with each other only very occasionally (although thankfully this is improving) and in addition to this, I am starting to get anticipatory bouts of seasickness & I think that I may also be developing a slight case of claustrophobia. Terrified.