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 I got in from France on Saturday night. I’m still pretty jet-lagged, but I’m recovering slowly.
As much as I freaked out in the weeks leading up to my trip, I’m proud to say it was a well-organized success. I remembered my underwear, and my passport, and my meds. I even remembered some French. All in all, I had an awesome time and I can’t wait to go back.
The whole experience got me thinking about some of the tools I use to stay organized while packing and traveling. Back in the day, I would say that the most stressful part of packing was dealing with toiletries. The night before I left town, I would inevitably be running all over the house trying to look for plastic bags to put my shampoo in so that it wouldn’t spill all over my clothing. Then I got a few simple travel toiletry items, and it made all the difference.
I store these items in my luggage so I always know where they are, and when I’m ready to pack I can just refill my shampoo and conditioner and be ready to go. The best thing about this list is that all of these items are available from under $20!
 1. The Eagle Creek Pack-It Toiletry Kit at Magellan’s. In this airport-friendly kit, each bottle is clearly marked “3 oz.” and the bag itself is clearly marked “1 quart/liter”. It’s clear plastic, so you can see what’s inside. This is one of the best things I’ve ever bought.
2. Eagle Creek Travel Bottle Kit at Magellan’s. If you need extra bottles, or want to customize your Toiletry Kit, grab one of these. Again, all of them are clearly marked “3 oz.”
3. Eagle Creek Plastic Pack-It Sac, Xtra Small, Magellan’s I have a few of these running around. I use one for prescription meds, one for colored pencils … and I could really use another one for first-aid supplies like ibuprofen and band-aids. These are invaluable!
4. Eagle Creek Plastic Pack-It Sac, Small, Magellan’s I use one of these for make up. Since I don’t have that much make-up, nor do I wear it that often, I can just chuck the whole case into my luggage. The best thing? These are spill-proof. On the return flight, one of my eye-shadow cases broke, spilling finely-ground, slightly oily, colorful pigment all over my make up case — and it stayed inside the case, not all over my clothes.
5. Eagle Creek Mesh Laminate Pack-It Sacs, Xtra Small. So you want to see inside your bag, but you also don’t want to show all your underwear to everyone else waiting in the security line. These mesh laminate Pack-It Sacs come in various sizes, from extra small to large, and balance visibility with discretion.
5. Magellan’s Flat-Pack Toiletry Kit  For longer trips, you’ll need to check a bag, and 3 oz. of shampoo might not be enough. I keep my toiletry kit stocked with shampoo, conditioner, lotion, contact lens solution, and a few first aid supplies.
6. Magellan’s Travel Jewelry Pocket OK, full disclosure — I don’t have one of these … yet. But I am going to get one. My current method of packing my earrings and necklaces in a series of nesting ziplock sandwich baggies is just. not. working.
Bon Voyage!
March 3rd is World Dyscalculia Day (see how it’s 3/3, so no matter how you order the digits, it doesn’t get screwed up?). What is dyscalculia, you ask? Well, it’s kind of like the Jermaine Jackson of the dyslexia family. Think “math dyslexia” and you’ll have a pretty good grasp on it. Or, check out the wikipedia article on math disorder.
I’m going to celebrate by not doing any math at all, for the rest of the day. In fact, I’m going to try not to use numbers at all. I’ll report back on how that works out.
I’m writing this post from JFK airport en route to Paris. I think I made it out of the house without forgetting anything critical (I obviously have my boarding passes and passport, right?) and I even managed to get a few hours of sleep last night.
I will resume posting when I return.
 I’ve been on about my upcoming trip to Paris for a couple of posts now (see here and here and here), and it’s almost down to the wire. I leave at noon on Friday.
As I wrote last time, there were things on my original list — the one I made in plenty of time, when I was planning to leave eight days later than I actually am — that simply had to be sacrificed to reality. One was to sell all that crap on Craigslist I’ve been meaning to deal with since November. This time I’m admitting that I won’t be able to do something about my travel jewelry situation. I’m sure I could have found something at The Container Store yesterday when I stopped to pick up seed storage, but I wasn’t thinking about it. I guess I’ll just go for my default — lots of ziplock baggies.
Unfortunately, I’ve also had to add to my list. Thanks to some incredibly, unbelievably slow shipping and handling, Continue reading Paris minus 36 hours and counting
Last week I wrote about my upcoming trip to France. I was going to try to prepare ahead of time, doing little bits at once, so I could avoid my usual ADD drama wherein I run around like a decapitated chicken for the last three days before I leave. I thought I was in pretty good shape.
Then, due to some inexplicable corporate reasons, my partner was informed that the entire company will be shut down for the third week in February. Everyone has to use vacation time whether they want to or not. Continue reading Travel Planning Update
 This is a cross-post from my other blog, Addaptabilities.com, but it’s kind of a big deal so I’m reposting it here.
As you may know, I divide my online writing time between my blogs and Squidoo. Squidoo is an online self-publishing platform that allows you to create articles, called “lenses”, without necessarily knowing all the technical stuff you need to know to run a Wordpress blog.
Yesterday my lens on math disability, What the Heck is Dysclaculia, was made Lens of the Day!
Of course, the validation is wonderful, but most importantly there are now hundreds of people who now know what dyscalculia is. This includes people who saw themselves in the article, people who realized that it described their friends or family members, and teachers who are taking this information to their schools. This is great news. The better people are informed, the better life is for those of us who have math disorder.
Today I found a link to this article in my inbox. It’s got some helpful tips for saving money and recovering some of the costs of ADHD treatment for you or your child. Depending on your income and your insurance situation, you may be able to do the following:
1. Take advantage of a Flexible Spending Arrangement (FSA), if offered by your employer
2. Look into the medical tax deduction
3. File an amended tax return retroactively
4. Spend the time to thoroughly analyze insurance plans
5. Develop friendly relationships with the specialists you consult as well as your insurer
6. Seek out an insurance assistance program
7. Investigate patient assistance programs designed to help the uninsured or underinsured with medication costs
Don’t know how to do these things? Read the article to find out.
As I posted the other day, I’m going to Europe in a few weeks, and I have a ton of crap to get done before then. If this trip is like, oh, any other trip I’ve taken in my life, EVER, I’ll get all of it done at 3 am the day we leave on a 7 pm flight, by which point I’ll get just enough sleep to feel thoroughly exhausted before I even begin my travels.
But this time, things will be different! This time I’ll be organized. This time I won’t be scrambling for the last few days before I leave, trying vainly to get everything out of the way before I go.
Ha. Continue reading Attention Deficit Disorder and Attempted Travel Planning
I’ve been hanging out on the Women with ADHD Ning, and recently one of the members mentioned that she’d never really fit in with “the girls”. Several more of members chimed in about how they’d never felt “feminine”. It seems that a lot of women with ADD are just no good with the girly stuff.
It’s not surprising, really. A femme has to be organized. She needs to get her hair cut regularly, and she needs to leave time to style it every morning, and then she needs to do her make-up. She needs to shop for coordinated, fashionable, flattering outfits, which can mean buying more bras than I’ve ever seen in one place to go with different necklines and silhouettes. Then she has to get up in the morning early enough to put all of this together. If you have ADD, you’re lucky to be heading off to work with matching shoes. We need to keep it simple just to stay sane.
For instance, take my wardrobe (please!). Clothes are one of the areas of my life that I streamline for time-management purposes. I don’t spend a ton of time shopping or dressing. To this end, my couture consists of five t-shirts and a single pair of jeans that are all way too big. But what the heck, I have a belt, which means my pants stay up. It’s all good. Continue reading Stupid pants.
My partner travels a lot. And when I say “a lot”, I mean that when somebody asks me where he is, I have to stop and think pretty hard about it. Is it Beijing? No, that’s next week … Australia? Hong Kong? Seoul? Tokyo? … Brussels?
Last year he spent more time driving on the left-hand side of the road than the right. The people in the local airport lounge for his preferred airline know him by name. Sometimes I think this is because they see him more than I do.
What makes it worthwhile is that sometimes, when he goes someplace really cool, I get to go with him.
Continue reading Organized Travel, ADHD Style
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