My first official trip

In preparation for my travels I splurged on several packing aids for carry-ons -- clothes envelopes, a universal charging amt for all my electronic gadgetry, a bag tether to hold my 2 bags together as one.  I also watched some videos on efficient business trip packing and was excited to try out what I learned.  I was very impressed how well everything fit in my bag, so well in fact that I was able to squish my pillow in too.  I'm so thankful to my chiropractor for recommending the contoured neck pillow to ease my neck/shoulder strain, but equally frustrated because now I can't bear to sleep on anything else.  So not only am I the twat at the airport with a laptop and 2 smartphones, but I'm also the tweed carrying a bed pillow too.  Still, I was really excited how easily everything fit in my bag.  Until I unpacked and really started thinking about the next few days.

Turns out I forgot to pack a few items.  Like shorts, pants, or any casual bottoms except for the capris I was wearing and running shorts.  I also forgot my pajimmyjams (PJs) and handknit wool bed socks.  This simply will not do.  I'm going to designate a pair of bedsocks for travel, and never take them out of my suitcase.  Luckily I found an awesome Lululemon yoga shop and got some new pants.  I had to get the regular length, since the talls were WAY too long for me.  I also got a beautiful purple tank top that I can wear without a bra.  Wow, I was so excited I rushed out of the dressing room to show the girl helping me.

On the flight up there was a 2 year old kid a row ahead of me who screamed nonstop from the moment she sat down until they opened the doors again.  Not cried, but that attention-seeking shriek that rattles the eardrums.  I kept expecting her to fall asleep from the sheer physical effort of yelling that long.  You could feel the tension throughout the cabin, and her mother didn't do anything to shush her.  I made up a story where the girl was on a game show and had to hit a certain unobtainably high frequency and volume in order to win the grand prize, and the continued screams were all attempts at winning.  It suddenly made the ordeal funny an somewhat sad, as she kept trying to hit that note but never succeeded.  At least it took away the frustration I felt towards her and her mother.

One last thing - what the hell is wrong with New Jersey roads?  When you pass signs that read "Left Turn Keep Right", what the hell is an out-of-stater supposed to do?  When all you want is to make a U turn and go back the way you came, why would you possibly think you should be in the rightmost lane instead of the left lane, and how in the name of Christ are you supposed ot get over 3 lanes of traffic at rush hour to make a right hand U turn at a light because YOU CAN'T TURN LEFT AT ANY STOPLIGHT??  There should be warnings about that plastered to the rental cars.  And the poor Garmin telling me it was recalculating was like that scene from Austin Powers:  Evacuation compl...comp...com...evacuation com..com...com...

Waiting at the crossroads

In my quest to pack up as much as I can, I'm going through all my old stuff sorting it into keep-sell-donate piles. And I find myself spending quite a lot of time playing with all the things I've saved over the years. I still have my sticker album and spent a while looking through all the collected stickers from my childhood. I was amazed how many distinct memories the stickers brought up, and how oddly fun it is to peel them off their backing and stick them down somewhere. Can you still buy stickers? I may need to buy some more.

I also have my favorite kid book that I made my mom read me every single night. Over and over, until I had it memorized and knew if she tried to skip a page to shorten the agony of reading the same book yet again. I can still quote about the first two thirds of the book. Given that it's a progressive repeating book, that's saying a lot. I wonder if my parents still have it seared in their memories too. "Big. big brown. big brown bear. big brown bear blue bull. big brown bear blue bull beautiful baboon..."
I'm willing to bet money they do. Never did figure out why the baboon was dressed in a tutu and pointe shoes.

Wanna guess how long it took me to pack the box containing these items and the rest of that shelf? Good thing I have a month to go.

The first one

Check it out --I packed my first box to move to our new home! That's right, by this time next month we will be living in our own place. I know the month is going to pass in the blink of an eye, so I'm trying to casually do as much as possible ahead of time. Of course, looking around the house I'm amazed just how much stuff I use daily and can't box up. And again there's the question of where to put all these boxes, since boxed-up stuff takes up way more space than stuff on shelves. My winter clothes were an easy choice to pack, and it was a great feeling to write "basement" on the box. Finally we will have real storage space. I think we've spent more time planning the basement than we have about arranging all the other rooms combined.

More to come...