What a difference a year makes!  Last year at this time, I was recovering from surgery and waiting for the lab results that would change my life forever.

This year, I am starting to plan a kitchen remodeling project and a possible bucket list trip.  For the record, refinancing the mortgage may have been one of the best decisions I ever made.  A lot of the financial stress from last year has been resolved.  Thankful for that!

So, if you have been around here much, you know I am a bucket list kind of girl.  One of the things I am struggling with – a lot – after cancer is figuring out how to re-prioritize the to do list.  The reality is that the cancer could come back at any time.  Or maybe not.  No one knows.

Yesterday I finally took myself to a kitchen contractor’s show room to start the process.  I’m not certain how expensive it will be (or, what level of expensiveness) but I have to find out.  Right?  Had a lovely chat with a kitchen designer guy who will send someone out to measure things so they can come up with a plan.  It’s exciting and terrifying at the same time.

BUT…part of the refinancing plan was to cash out some funds to get the kitchen done so I can possibly sell the albatross that is my house at some point in the future.  Maybe.

I sort of promised myself that I would go somewhere exciting for vacation this year since I went nowhere aside from Pennsylvania (and Naples) last year.  I’m not exactly complaining about how things worked out since I am more than thrilled that I was able to work in two trips to PA and a long weekend in Naples while going through everything else.  It was an accomplishment, no doubt.

So, I started to think about options.  There are two National Park road trips to the northwest US that sound pretty great (northern CA and OR or WA state).  I would most likely be going alone and for whatever reason that is bothering me.  I could be wrong, but most of the places on the trip would be fairly remote and a tiny red flag is waving in my head.

I also looked at some European trips which would mean group travel.  Ireland, Scotland, maybe Iceland again.  Hmmmm….  The Iceland trip I want to do is now a 10 day thing with travel to the places we visited in 2015.   Not that it would be bad going back to see the same sites a second time…I’d really rather spend my days (and dollars) seeing something new.

And then I got to thinking about those river cruises in Europe.  I suppose somewhere in the back of my brain, I always thought that would be a cool thing to do.  So I started to nose around on some of the websites (a bad thing lol ) and the idea took off.

I requested info from Viking River Cruises and was highly disappointed.

The per person rate wasn’t all that awful but there is no such thing as a “single supplement” with Viking. I would have to pay double – or the full fare of two people – to go.  Not a deal at all!

Of course, I couldn’t let it go.  Nope.  I found a bunch of other companies that also do the river cruises.  Huh.  I ended up on the AAA website looking for deals there…and, this is creepy, they track when people are on the website looking around.  A travel agent emailed me asking if she could help plan a trip.

So, I floated the idea of a river cruise on the Rhine in May or June but I do not want to pay double.  I figured that would FINALLY be the end of it.  Too expensive to consider, and then I could move on and go back to the northwest road trip idea.

But no.  There is a company that is WAIVING the single supplement for a mid May cruise date.  All inclusive.  Small ship.  Highly rated.  Castles Along the Rhine it is called and yes, there are castles to be seen.  The travel agent called Friday afternoon – she asked the company to hold a reservation for me until Tuesday.

And now I have to decide.  Do I say eff it and go? Do I say “no” because it more than I usually spend on a vacation and do the financially prudent thing?  I have been wrestling with this all weekend, like I’m waiting for someone to “give me permission” to do something slightly extravagant.

In the back of my head is a little voice that is whispering…”Go, you don’t know you will be able to do this again.  Ever.”

I know I would tell OTHER people to throw caution to the wind and do what makes them happy.  Why is it so hard to tell myself that?