Packing

Okay… so two things. Maybe three.

One. I’m the worst at packing. I’ve discussed it here many times.

My time honored packing technique consists of shoving in way too many clothes and then picking one item– one!– and, at the last possible gasp freaking out and shoving as many of those items possible in every corner of every suitcase available.

Going to Denver, it was T-shirts.

Once, it was underwear.

Sometimes, it’s an extra pair of black stretchy shoes. Why not? I own four.

Very often, it’s yarn.

In order to, I don’t know, do this at a saner pace today, I decided to do NOTHING ELSE but pack. Like, I walked the dogs, finished an edit, and packed. Took a nap, and packed. Returned an e-mail, and packed.

For those of you who are as squirrel brained as I am, you can see what I’m doing here. I’m “rearranging” in my head. I’m thinking, “Hey, I’ve got fifty dozen T-shirts already, maybe not so much, yeah?” Or, “You know, it’s 90% humidity and 90 degrees in Orlando. I’m pretty sure I only need two cardigans, and that’s one for the way back and one for the hotel.”  It’s basically THINKING about what I’m doing before I panic and go FUCK I DON’T KNOW WHAT I’M DOING.

We’ll see how it works.

Two things I’m doing differently this time around.

A. I’m bringing my tablet and not my laptop. This scares me. My laptop was THE ONLY WAY to bring with me ALL THE THINGS. It’s the ultimate in hoarding and packing. FOUR YEARS OF DOCUMENTS in ONE SMALL COMPUTER. It’s genius.

But I depend on this small computer, and it costs a lot, and if it gets lost or destroyed, that’s a replacement I can’t afford. Besides, it’s got FOUR YEARS OF DOCUMENTS in it (and yes, external hard drive, but my last one converted into a handy paperweight so I’ve been reloading it for the last year.)

So, I’m taking the tablet, with this month’s project on it and the capacity to share google docs and hopefully that’s all I need.

I also tried to make sure I can blog on it, because my blog is set up for one device only and I’m so good at pushing that one little button that I’ve literally forgotten how to log in from another device. So I fixed that and maybe I’ll blog!

So that’s happening.

B. The other thing is that I’m trying to be sane about yarn. I mean, yes, I’ve got five other projects in my luggage–small things–but I’ve decided to try this bag here for my carry on.

I know it doesn’t look that impressive–I’ve got some ROCKIN’ bags, and this is Michael’s, very unassuming, but it fits in my carry on, and–the fun part–it zippers on the top and the yarn comes out the hole in the side. This is exciting to me because I’m THE WORST at dragging half-finished socks around airports, or dropping a ball at my feet. I’m a big girl. Those seats are frickin’ tiny. I drop a ball of yarn in the center seat and that things gone until the whole plane unloads and I’m on my hands and knees, literally the elephant in the room.

So I’ve got the two projects tucked in the top, and when the time comes, I unzip, pull out a project, zip up again, and I can knit happily for the rest of the trip. I also remembered my Kindle, and the cool thing about the Kindle/yarn combo is that I can hang my Kindle from the seat in front of me and do both. It’s marvelous. And it fits in the top of my bag, so my MO is to pull out the yarn bag, pull out the Kindle, put everything else over my head and voila!

So, I’m not saying this will be perfect–and I’m sure this is NOT the most exciting blog post I’ve written, but I have done some shit jobs packing and I have run out of my house with a terrible “FUCK!!!” feeling of not having everything done.

I figure, this time, even if I DON’T have everything done, at least I don’t have that feeling, right?

I’ll try to blog a few times while I’m at Dreamspinner Weekend. It’s really one of my favorite events–I see a lot of people I really love.

It’s why I pack in the first place, I guess 😉