The Travel/Fashion Post

Ridiculous advance planning: it's this or I resume my macrame with dryer lint.

I’m a nervous traveler, generally, and with two crazed sugar monkeys and LSS popping antihistamines like M&Ms I’ve got my hands full.

My main coping mechanism is obsessive advance planning. I will pack my bag a few days before I board the plane to allow for edits, and, yes, I will lay out my travel clothes the day before (I do this all by myself!).

The travel clothes are perhaps the most important. Long gone are the smoky days when I would put on a suit with a thin tie just to board a plane and white-gloved LSS carried an armored purse called a “train case.”

My family has come to expect a certain sang froid with my sartorial choices and this expectation is only heightened by being a blogger from Bridgetown, SoggyLand. By putting the clothes I will be traveling in on the blog before departure I hope to influence the kids to plan ahead (they read the blog looking for an edge in the eternal struggle for freedom and more screen time). That and so my relatives can recognize me when I arrive (Not to worry, I’ve got cell numbers of several of them).

The problem is that even with my obsessive advance planning I’m completely done packing in about 15 minutes, whereby I float around the house reminding “people” that she should start packing too.

This goes over about as well as you might expect. LSS usually stays up late the night before traveling and does everything in one fell swoop – I can only imagine how the antihistamines will aid this process. The goal we will be fighting for is to have two check-in bags each below 50 pounds.

I’m hoping not to be standing on the bathroom scale at 12:45 am, holding an over-stuffed suitcase, only to have to put it down and say, “Okay, the electric toothbrush stays.” But even if I do, one has to be philosophical and embrace the idea that different people do things differently. So vive la difference! and pass the M&Ms.