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.
This February he has a meeting in Paris. Yeah, I know, poor me.
So I’m off to Paris in a month, or something, and I have a ton of stuff to do before I leave. I’m probably not the only one who finds international travel to be a little stressful, but as with so many things, I manage to make it just a tad bit worse.
My typical ADD travel planning procedure goes something like this:
Trip minus 6 weeks and counting. “I have that trip coming up soon. Next week I should really make sure I have everything I need in case I need to buy anything”.
Trip minus 5 weeks and counting. “I should make sure the cat sitter is available during our trip. I’ll e-mail her next week.”
Trip minus 4 weeks and counting. “That trip is coming up pretty soon. Next week I should check to see if I’m running low on any prescriptions.”
Trip minus 3 weeks and counting. “I wonder if I have contact lens cleaner in bottles less than 3 ounces. I should check on that before the trip.”
Trip minus 2 weeks and counting. “I wonder if any of my clothes fit?”
Trip minus 1 week and counting. (staring off into space) “La la la la la, la la la la la la la …”
Trip minus 3 days and counting. “OH CRAP I’M LEAVING FOR EUROPE IN THREE DAYS AND I ONLY OWN A SINGLE TORN PAIR OF BAGGY GRANDMA JEANS!”.
This time, I’m trying not to do that.
Since Rule Number One for managing my time and sanity is to avoid the mall at all costs, I do 95% of my shopping online. So far, I’ve ordered some tops, which have arrived in plenty of time to try them on and exchange the ones that didn’t fit. I still need to remember to do the actual return, but I at least I remembered to take care of ordering the replacements in the correct sizes. I now have two tops and a dressy winter jacket taken care of.
I still probably need one or two more tops, one or two pairs of pants, and maybe a vest or jacket or something to accessorize and pretend that I’m not wearing the same three shirts for two weeks straight. So far I’ve spent most of the evening looking for this stuff. Why is this so hard? I just want a couple of outfits that won’t wrinkle, will dry quickly, and don’t look like featured ensembles from my second grade teacher’s line of polyester couture.
Am I really being unreasonable?
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[...] and counting 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 [...]