My problem is that I can’t predict what I’ll want – or need – to wear when I get to my destination. I really try to but I find it hard since I’m not there!! (even if I have been before!) Is it slightly dressed up? Dressed down? Subdued? Or can I go bright colors?

So various options get snuck in (even after purging extras) and then footwear and the toiletry kit make a heavy bag heavier. And I hate packing. And I’m thrilled to have shut the bag and inevitably it’s 2am.

IN DEFENSE of those of us who still check bags, it’s quite lovely to not fight for every inch of roller-bag carry-on space in the overhead compartments. I get to sip my coffee and read the paper while mayhem happens above my head.

But now you’ve got me thinking I want to be successful like you and those other people. I’ve always thought my packing process wasn’t the way to go…Maybe it doesn’t matter if I don’t look quite exactly right when I arrive wherever I’m going…

Anyhow, brilliant post Ms. L,
c

And I’d just made peace with the fact that I’m *not*.

Now I have to reevaluate?

But what if I NEED something I didn’t pack?

(Before we got luggage scales, we once weighed everything, EVERYTHING, and put a wee post-it on it so that we know how much it weighed IN GRAMS, then added it up. We’ve had the overweight sticker sooo many times. )

What about hard-case carry-on for social media? ‘I can’t follow anyone else – I’d have to check you in.’

(Side comment: I think it would be way better to weigh people *with* their luggage. Then I could take EVERYTHING.)
Andrew Lightheart @alightheart´s last blog ..Creating a Trigger List and freaking out less

I have yet to see a people with kids who have it all together on a plane. Even those types who always have it all together.

Schlepping is H-O-T.

Now I find myself in the opposite category. Not only do I have a baby, with a stroller and a separate suitcase full of “essential” baby supplies (you don’t want to be caught in the third world of florida without that extra, broken, ear thermometer), a wife with a bag that weighs ten tons empty (the sticker they put on her bag says ‘morbidly obese’), but I also schlep five cameras and a billion rolls of film that all need to be hand checked.

Hand checked means slowly and gently swabbing and touching everything in your suitcase. It’s actually really disconcerting to see some stranger with gloves caressing your stuff; if nothing else, the internet has taught me that people can have a sexual fetish about absolutely anything, and I just know that one of those TSA employees goes home after making sweet latex gloved love to my stuff, and “finishes” to my Pentax.

In this ‘new normal’, I eventually came to realize that I was much better at schlepping, and became the designated schlepper. My wife encourages me on the sidelines by compliments like “its sexy” that I schlep so well. I know she is just being manipulative, but that doesn’t matter, it feeds into some primordial, prideful man brain. You might try that if you you go back to the fatso.