Bag It!

My gym friends and I were having a good laugh about the size of my handbag and what it contains in it today. While they said it wasn't as big as I made it out to be, they couldn't believe the stuff I pulled out of it.

I can definitely commiserate with Nora Ephron who wrote similarly of the wacky things that she finds in her handbag. Aren't we all guilty of using the bag as a black hole at one time or another? For me it is every time someone hands me a receipt that I don't really need. Instead of finding a garbage bag, I stick it into the abyss of my handbag.

Speaking of the term handbag. My bag should more appropriately be called a shoulder bag. You see one hand could not freely carry such a load. Instead, I need my sculpted gym shoulder to shoulder that burden.

So what do I have in my handbag today? My wallet, my planner (a big planner for big plans) my cell phone, my cell phone charger (which I now carry ever since the time Thing 2 broke his arm and we were in the hospital for nearly 12 hours with my dead cell phone, staring at the electrical outlet which would have charged the phone if only I had had my charger.), my pashmina (for the many times I am too cold and without other outerwear to throw on), a bag of almonds (good and good for you if you have nothing else to eat and no possibility of eating soon), lip gloss, chapstick, nail file, random wrapped mint, random now unwrapping tampon (dont worry I threw it out upon finding it), a pen, my checkbook and check register, various restaurant and bookstore gift cards, hand cream, hand sanitizer, tissues, a small sack that turns into a reusable shopping bag, sunscreen (I swear this is a very small size), shea butter tub (again, sounds big but is actually small), a wrapped Walker's short bread cookie and several tea bags (well I had to make it worth my while when I was lucky enought to visit the business class lounge!), and I think that is it.

You probably thought I would mention a bunny somewhere in there, like a magician who pulls one out of a hat. Alas, I don't think that would get through airport security. My friends were laughing about the almonds and said the airport search dogs must have sniffed those out. I pointed out that because neither were they real sharp, nor at all liquid, I had no problem getting those nuts through.

Speaking of airport security, because I have a few liquids in my bag, I accidentally forgot to put my handcream in the clear plastic bag on the way to London. Turns out they never caught it. My friend Sheila from the gym said she had forgotten a half filled water bottle in her bag and no one caught that. Yikes! Any similar stories to share?

In A Pickle

For several years now I have been making my own housecleaning products or using all natural ones. The fact that my sister was diagnosed with breast cancer in February, at 45 years old, has just ramped up my paranoia about environmental factors which lead to cancer. So, I have accordingly ramped up my efforts to live a more chemical free life.

So, that is why these days, I smell like I live in a pickle, or that I have just put up jars of pickles for the winter time. You see, I am addicted to the wonder fluid, vinegar. I was already big into vinegar for an organic and cheap way to deal with weeds and moss on walkways and patios and was able to deal with the fact that the yard smelled like a jar of pickled jalapenos for a few days afterwards. However, after reading more and more about the myriad of uses of vinegar inside the house-from laundry (instead of fabric softener!) to glass cleaning, to you name it, I had to go out and immediately build my arsenal of vinegar. I supplemented it with baking soda as it also has fabulous cleaning properties without chemicals, while being cheap. Did I mention it doesn't smell like pickles?

Don't worry I am going to fiddle around with this vinegar thing. Experiment by putting some essential oils in to cut that smell, and see what happens. All I need is a bunson burner and it could be like chemistry class all over again, except this time without the chemicals, and thus goggles (though as I remember making the old volcano with vinegar and baking soda in school, goggles might not be a bad idea, I wonder if they come in fashion colors?)

I just bought some fresh keffir lime leaves to go into the homemade thai food I am making tonight and can't help thinking that maybe one or two of those in the vinegar would make the whole thing smell better. I could be onto something, or maybe just creating a pickled condiment (in time for christmas presents?). Only time will tell.

Back from the Food Holiday

Well, by now I should be over my food lag, so it's back to salad plate size portions of only health foods (with the exception of the leftovers of my daughter's birthday cake-homemade and can't let that go to waste, only to waist). It was fun while it lasted, and it usually lasts a few days after the actual vacation.

Being in a different diet mindset has its freedom and fun, but it also has its cold hard consequences, and that has become apparent on my scale and in my closet, with its narrowing (ironic word in this context) options.

It was great saying yes without hesitation to the clotted cream and scones, having a drink on most days instead of more like twice a month. French pastries every morning while in Paris? Isn't that de riguer? Full fat British yogurt which kicks the Greek kind's butt? Well, I was only there for a short time, and it is the best yogurt and you can't get it in America... No need to go on with the rationalizations, it is very obvious how I find myself in my current position.

Nevertheless, if I nip this in the bud (or butt) and get back to reality (and pitch out the rest of that cake) I'll be fine. Off to have my breakfast of nonfat greek yogurt in a tiny cup (think playdough sized container. Yes, its back to reality at my house and hopefully in my closet soon too!

Puff Mommy

Early to bed, early to rise. An old expression, and now I know why. Lately, I have been waking up and my face, with the humid New England weather, summer allergies and the fact that I sleep with my face in my pillow, can best be described as a puff ball.

I look as if I have gone three rounds in the boxing ring and am definitely not fit for human consumption. So, what to do? My solution is to wake up an hour earlier than I normally would if I need to go out in public (fortunately we family members don't really look at each other very carefully in the morning, and just go about our catatonic morning rituals). This gives my face time to shrink back to size, and hopefully all of the overnight wrinkles fade away (away, away instant old lady!).

The exception to the rule? Going off to the gym for my 6:00 am class once a week. Frankly, at that hour, the public has to accept me as is. Fortunately, the ladies in my gym class also just roll out of bed and stagger in. One of the gals who used to go to my gym even proudly boasted that she slept in her gym clothes to save a few minutes in the am. My kind of girl!

You might be wondering what I do during the new found time in the a.m. while I wait for my face to return to its normal size and shape. Why, blog of course. Or read the paper, check email, or whatever keeps me productive and upright. I do feel a bit like Chicken Lttle, except my line is not "the sky is falling," but rather, "my face is falling." As long as it stops at my neck, I am okay with it.

Girl Gone

For some reason, my gym teacher likes to refer to biceps as "guns." She also likes to refer to breasts as "girls." Lately, I have been thinking of what my older sister has been through, now that one of her "girls" is gone. It is really hard to believe what we as a family have gone through emotionally, and my sister, emotionally and physically, since February when we first learned that her surgeon suspected breast cancer.

The thing that has kept us going I think through the emotional roller coaster of her initial (worse) misdiagnosis, and her stroke, her long awaited mastectomy and lymph node surgery, has been a serious sense of humor. Breast cancer doesn't seem like a very funny topic, but we managed to make it that way anyway, so that we could laugh together and share that emotion, instead of the more traditional emotions of fear, grief and shock.

At the beginning of this journey, I would joke with her that she needed to keep me abreast of any developments, that she could talk to me anytime if she had something to get off of her chest. When it became apparent that she was in this for the longhaul, surgery, chemo et al, in came the chemo jokes. Whenever she forgot something we would accuse her of having chemo brain before she actually got chemotherapy.

In her state of shock, she let her roomie and I do all the research about her initial diagnosis and immerse ourselves into the language of breast cancer. Her initial diagnosis, was inflammatory breast cancer, the worst possible type of breast cancer. For almost a month, we were lead to believe that her cancer was IBC. One day she was on the phone with a friend or family member and she paused to ask me what IBC stood for. Without hesitation, I replied "idiot with breast cancer." It sounds really harsh as I write this, but she got the joke and laughed with me. Cancer and all its tons of information, drugs and darkness, had rendered her numb and unable to think. The only thing to do was to acknowledge this with a dose of humor and move on.

When she was held in limbo at Memorial Sloan Kettering for one month with delayed appointments and finally a last minute refusal to perform her surgery, we joked that we would do the surgery ourselves armed with a steak knife and a bottle of brandy. She would need to bring her own drink, the brandy was for the "surgeon."

Now with the surgery finally behind her and chemo half over, we have naturally moved on to the Kojak jokes in honor of her hair loss. "Who loves you baby?" Is our new motto. We also make a point of watching funny movies together.

Not every conversation is laced with humor of course, but we try to make the conversations as titillating as possible. We don't want to run out of jokes, because we decided that the person who can't see through to the humor in this is, well, just a boob.

Lug-Age

Back from vacation! Just got home in the early hours today (more like last night!). Poor hubby had to drive the 3 hours from the airport to our house in a wind and torrential rain storm while the rest of us slumbered (or in my case tried to, the waves made by those eighteen wheelers going by can be pretty noisy).

We got home to total darkness at 1 am. The storm had caused a power outage. The only benefit of this was that because we couldn't see a thing, I felt justified in declaring that the luggage (0r lug-age as I like to call it) should just remain in the car until morning unless we wanted to do a clumsy impression of Helen Keller hauling her bags into the house.

The luggage was heavier on the way back because of what I like to call forced merchandising. You see, once again, I did not pack the right wardrobe for the climate. You would think that after living in the UK for three years, I would remember what the weather was like there in the summer, but I goofed, or had retail-induced amnesia. After about 45 seconds of waiting outside of Heathrow for the rental car shuttle bus in my sandals, it became immediately apparent that I had packed the wrong things. I knew immediately that the sandals weren't going to cut the blustery weather. Nor the capri pants I was wearing.

Unfortunatley, the only other warm options in my luggage were my hiking boots and hiking pants. An okay look out on the trail, but around London? At parties? In Paris? Mon dieu, absolutment impossible! Day 1, arrival day, I grinned and bore it hoping it was an unseasonal cold snap, despite what my friend told me: that the entire summer had been like that thus far. Day 2, I did what I had to do, what any self respecting, indeed, self preserving woman would do in my shoes (yes, literally, except swap that to sandals), I went shopping.

I know, I know, clothes shopping in the UK? In the land of "pay twice what you would in the US?" But, I am happy to report, that ever resourceful, I found a trendy Danish label being sold at an antiques center (hubby says only I could find such a thing). The best news, the prices were affordable by US standards. Add to this that not only was I helping myself out in a pinch, but probably single handedly curing the sluggish world economic condition, and I felt pretty proud.

This feeling of euphoria was only further enhanced the next day when I found a pair of closed toe Clark's shoes for only twenty pounds. I think forty US dollars for a pair of sensible and stylish shoes is more than reasonable under the circumstances. In fact, even if I had packed the right shoes, I would still have been sorely tempted to buy these shoes and probably would not have passed them up.

Speaking of "sorely", unfortunately there is a downside in instant shoe buying in a moment of extreme need. There is no "breaking in" time for the shoes. Thus, the sore blisters when one is forced to walk around Paris in the cute, stylish, bargain Clark's in an effort to find a cute, stylish bistro in which to dine. C'est la vie as they say there.

Pack It Up!

We are off to London tonight. Of course, I haven't packed a thing yet. I have, however, started piling. This is my usual approach to the whole "taking the things I will need when gone" issue.

I am a proud last minute packer in terms of actually putting things in the suitcase and going over my mental list of what will be needed. But a few days before the trip, I start "the pile." The pile is composed of all of the things I think of in the course of my day, that I don't want to forget to take, and mostly gifts for people I am visiting (no, the microwave macaroni and cheese is not for snacks, you can't get it over in the UK, so we are bringing it as a present).

It isn't until a few hours before we actually leave the house that I get down to the serious packing, what I am going to take to wear, read, etc. and how I am going to fit it all in that bag to the right.

Inevitably, I vacillate between what I like to call the "kitchen sink approach" and the "bare minimalist" approach. Do I take this vacation as a chance to pare down to the basics and lighten the load and make my life more simple? Or do I pack like I am never coming home again, like I might be subjected to extreme weather patterns? I can't say which I choose as each trip is different (and the amount of time left to pack and my mood often make the decision for me), but invariably, I get it wrong.

If I stuff my luggage with every imaginable item I might need, I come home with 80% of it absolutely unused and no room to take back all of the really neat things I coveted on the trip. If I go the bare minimalist route, I invariably forget several crucial items, causing me to have to find them in a strange land, at an exhorbitent price, not to mention, a new mini-wardrobe because the weather I packed for bore no relation to the weather I actually experienced.

Which way will I pack today? I won't know until this afternoon. Though I have to say, it is always more tempting to go with the bare minimalist approach. Because if there is one thing I hate more than packing, it's unpacking.

Back in a few weeks dear reader, at which time I will let you know how the packing, unpacking and purchasing went.