No worries?

I was talking to a friend last night and she asked me if I was worried about the trip to Greece. Worried? Too right. My worries (rational and irrational) start with the plane crashing and work their way on from there...

In no particular order:

- The plane crashing (total paranoia fear I always have when flying)

- DD getting travel sick (my first bout was on a plane when I was three months old)

- DD screaming for the whole four hour flight

- Me getting travel sick

- Our luggage getting lost

- DBF's whole family turning up at the airport at 2.00am to meet the baby

- Me and DBF's family having our usual non-understanding each other fall out so the holiday becomes a complete stress for everyone

- DBF's family having issues with my parenting skills

- Totally inappropriate gifts from his family (I still have to work on appearing genuinely happy on receiving something I hate)

- My inability to speak Greek

I'm sure there are more but that's the ones that are most on my mind. Don't get me wrong, I'm a strong and capable person and I'll cope with all of the above but I just wish that it would feel a little bit more like a holiday and a little bit less like 10 days of stress.

Also, DBF doesn't cope too well with the guilt that his parents can lay on him. Before DD it was 'when are you coming home, what are you doing with your life?' type stuff. Now it'll be 'we never see the baby'. And I'm sure there is also an element of 'and we just don't get on with your choice of partner' in there as well. This means that if he's stressed, I get more stressed - if he can't cope with his family, why should I be able to?

It makes me sad that DBF feels that me and his family don't like each other and nothing will ever change that. From my side it's not true, I do like them but I find them very difficult and the fact that communication is mainly done through translation I don't think we have a chance to really get to know each other. To put all this another way, I have been to Greece twice in the eight years we've been together which should clearly illustrate how much I enjoy going there...

Well, maybe 'not enjoy' is not the right expression as I do have fun when we're there, it's the fact that every meeting between me and his family seems to end with more misunderstandings between us than ever and so I feel the less I see them, the better.

One thing is for sure, I must improve my Greek. I've been saying this for eight years now but as we want DD to be bi-lingual and as we've truly cemented the relationship as permanent I think it's much more important than it has been in the past. I hope that as DD learns, I will and once we get through this knackering first few months I hope I have more energy to learn.

Anyway, I've got a week to go and I'm not losing any sleep over it (sleep is waaaay too precious!) and I keep telling myself that as long as I do my bit, maybe this'll be the breakthrough visit.