winding down

The goal for today? Keep it low key. Work on getting voice back, which requires doing nothing much except popping pills and ... hydrating! My herbal teas are being put to good use. Ed tells me to sleep during the day. Terrible idea! I want the sleepiness to creep in at night time. Nothing is more delicious than a feeling of drowsiness right around 10 or 11 p.m. 

I have two outings for the day. The first, predictably, is to feed the animals.

What, you dont think that qualifies as a biggie? Cut me some slack, I'm recovering!

Breakfast. Unfortunately, I've become spoiled. All those delicious croissants and sweet breads in the morning! My traditional oatmeal feels like a real let down! Still, one needs to stay the course and veer towards the healthy, so oatmeal it shall be. For today.

(I compensate by a return to our wonderfully stale but delicious Sacher Tort for lunch.)

I am totally embarrassed to admit to my preoccupation for the rest of the day, especially since it has been my late night preoccupation for a while now: I have been agonizing over my suitcase. Ed, who has always traveled with his same old duffle-backpack (think: 50 years old, zipper repaired many times), would shake his head in puzzlement/disapproval/amazement. If you have something that basically keeps your clothes together for travel, why look for improvements? Why indeed! It is a fact that I do travel a lot. And that I rarely, perhaps even never check my bag, at least on the outbound journey. But my fantasy carry-on suitcase has evolved over the years. I need it to be large, but within the required guidelines of the airlines I tend to use. (22 x 14 inches for Delta, 21.5 x 13.75 for Air France, 21.5 x 13.5 for KLM.) Each of these airlines will wink wink at an extra half an inch, but I do not want to be caught off guard and have someone insist at the gate that I tag it through to my final destination. In other words, I should stick with the smallest of the three.

Okay, easy peasy, right? Wrongo bongo! (My grandkids are very familiar with these grandma phrases, with the addition of yeppers peppers and nopers popers. Just ask them!) Most carry-ons are EITHER 21 inches to meet most international requirements, or 22 inches for those traveling domestically. Should I push the limits or relinquish a half an inch? And there's more: the matter of volume. You do not want to, no, rephrase that -- I do not want to pick a carry-on with low volume for whatever reason (handle is inside construction, etc.). And here comes the next requirement: it must be expandable because I tend to get stuff for the kids when I travel. I dont mind sending it through on the way back. Okay, fine. All that calls for much searching. But well you might ask, well might Ed ask -- dont I already have a decent suitcase that meets (wink wink) certain dimensions and expands and has adequate volume?

I do have a decent suitcase. Here's the caveat: I was younger when I bought it. Enough younger that I did not pay attention to weight. I did not pay attention to the absolute necessity of having a grab handle to get it down from the overhead (because at 5 ft 5 inches, I belong to the category of short people from the point of view of overhead bins). And most importantly -- and this prompted the search -- I had settled for just a two wheeler, because two wheelers give you a tiny bit more volume inside. 

Try navigating a two wheeler down an airplane (narrow!) aisle. Just try it. You can't! You have to wiggle and bump your way down and most often everyone around you is grumpy and in a hurry so you wind up picking up the damn thing and carrying it and believe me, at my age, this is sub-optimal. When I travel with my grandchild it is more than sub-optimal because I'm usually already assisting with her stuff. My hands are full. And so I want spinner wheels, to push the case forward on its side!

Okay, have I given you enough text on the subject of suitcases? I should say that I have pride in the look as well. I dont want just a black suitcase. I dont want a flashy one either. But I want it to look nice! Is this too much to ask? (Ed: yes it is.)

My travel expenses have been significant lately, so I have been postponing throwing money at a suitcase for a while now. But 2024 promises to be a year replete with travel and I cannot do the lift and carry thing anymore without feeling like perhaps this is where I should take greater care. So for weeks now I have been studying suitcases and since I have a trip around the corner, this weekend was my last chance to get one prior to it. I finally decided on one -- it's not perfect and at 21, it is half an inch smaller than I am allowed, which kills me! (Perhaps two more pairs of socks would have fit in had I found one at 21.5 inches that checked all the other boxes perfectly!) It's also not the superstar that I've been ogling but which costs way too much for my retirement budget. This small downgrade doesn't kill me, but still, my second fiddle is costing me enough. I wish it were also the most beautiful suitcase in the world. It isn't that, but (I hope) it's good enough. And it has the spinner wheels!

 

In the late afternoon, I go for my second outing, over to my daughter's house to give her moral support and to wrap tree ornaments as they take down their own Christmas tree. I can't talk of course, but I can smile at the kids and wrap ornaments in toilet paper (Snowdrop is immersed in writing a book, Sparrow is an enthusiastic ornament remover!), as we work through this final stage of Christmas in their home.

Evening. I listen to Ed talk about how lucky we are. For him, this is measured by the fact that we have food on the table and heat in the house.  I'll add (and he wont disagree) that we are indeed lucky, for all the love that fills our everyday, from all sides.