Warning: Rant to follow

Life lately has been a little more nausea inducing than usual.
The monkey is taking me on an amazing holiday next month. We start in Italy and then cruise to Barcelona and down through the Canaries, Dominican Republic and then end in Ft Lauderdale. Sounds great, right? Yeah, it would be except for a few small problems.
1. The travel company has yet to send out out plane tickets. We leave in two weeks and I am a little on the anal-retentive side. Give me another week and I'll be looking for someone's head on a plate. I expect the hyperventilating to start any time now.
2. The travel company sent us a notice about our trip to Northern Europe in May. Since we're not planning to go to Northern Europe in May, but rather southern Italy in November, I was a little concerned. Where it says, "a little concerned", in the previous sentence please insert the words, "ready to send hot firey death to every travel agent involved in this debacle".
3. The travel company ignored our wishes about cabin placement and put us, "where ever".
4. Our beloved doggy has severe congestive heart failure. This means he has a REALLY enlarged hert and has to be on meds for the rest of his life. We are fairly upset. He doesn't seem to care at all. We only found out yesterday.
5. Cruises are fancy. VERY FANCY. Again, this likely doesn't sound like a bad thing to most people, but the monkey and I live in jeans and tees. We've had to drop a bundle on clothes just so we'll be able to eat dinner on the ship. It's not a huge problem, but one we didn't forsee and oh, did I mention we leave in two weeks?!
6. The monkey has had to work an extra two days this month and is pretty stressed.
7. The in-laws arrive tomorrow (they didn't bother to say when, just sometime friday). to spend the night and we're supposed to leave Saturday morning to visit the new niece.
8. Mothereffing sock wars. WTF was I thinking when I joined this giant clusterf#$? Why won't it just end? If no one's killed me off by the end of next week, I am committing ritual suicide by sock. Enough already! It's been poorly executed and not even mildly moderated and I will never do this again. There's a special place in hell for people who cause things like this to happen. I think it entails knittng the same pilly ball of scritchy acrylic for all eternity.
The travel stuff wouldn't be so bad if the agency would just answer our questions (or the phone at all) and give us straight answers or at least pretend to know wtf is going on. It been pretty frustrating. I'm having some dress clothes made because it's just too bloody hard to find party dresses at this time of year. Now I just have to find some khakis and a sport jacket for the monkey.
I've had the hair cut and coloured. I've got the makeup and necessities situation in hand. Passports are up to date. Bills will be paid up. And all the usual stuff is on the lists. Yeah, I said LISTS. I'm mildly anal- retentive remember? And okay, maybe a little compulsive, but I don't like surprises. Especially surprises like, "you don't have anywhere to stay in Rome, SURPRISE!".
I can totally live without that.
And hey, I almost forgot, the charkha is actually in transit. The bloody thing finally shipped. Of course, that's all that shipped. No spare spindles, no pre-ordered drop spindles or charkha carry bag. It took two days and six emails just to sort that charming mess out. So, after all was said and done, I decided to be happy that the charkha shipped and not hold my breath on the rest of the stuff. If it comes great, if it doesn't, you'll all hear about it and the company I dealt with. Did I mention that I was a little vindictive?
And to soften the rant for all of you who stuck with it to this point, a pic of the Gem with it's new goodies:


That's Winderwood BFL on there. I'm doing a 2 ply double knit. It reminds of tequila sunrises. Maybe I'll go have one now.