Packing - Ugh

 I hate packing.  I am a "just in case" packer because I've been kicked by the Unprepared Mule a few times.  Not packing for cold or hot or wet and being sorry.  And I seem to have to think of it all:

my clothes, books, shoes-which ones?, phone and iPad chargers, dop kit, snacks in a kit for the car that includes paper towels, cups, knife, zip storage bags, pills, hand wipes and sanitizer, water - lots of water, etc., etc., etc.  Believe me, I've learned over time what we need.  This time we will have Elizabeth with us so must make room for her and her bag(s) and snack preferences, Gatorade, etc. 

 PH?  About an hour before we leave he will take his suitcase out, toss in a few pairs of undies, a couple of shirts and his bathing suit.  Done.  I will swear to the truth that one day 30 minutes before leaving for the airport he got his suitcase out of the closet.  

Now, to give him due credit, because we are going to be gone for berrying he has been walking the shoulders of the roads with a container picking what ripe black raspberries there are now for freezing because we love a black raspberry pie in January and he remembered pea season, got the tires rotated.  He is ever ready to run to the store for whatever I forgot.  So he does do what I don't.

My preferred mode of travel is by car.  You can jam a lot of stuff in a car that you can't in a carry-on if flying.  For a 'just in case' packer cars are the way to go. I don't have to decide on one pair of shoes, I can take 3.

The bag gets put on the rocking chair in the bedroom a couple of weeks before departure and as I think of something it gets tossed in before I forget. Believe me, it's under there somewhere.   At some point I start folding and counting days vs. shirts.

Usually I think "no one here is ever going to see me again so won't know if I wore this shirt 2-3 days in a row."  But we are going to go hot and steamy and the last time we made this trip the kids changed their clothes three times a day because they were soaked through.  We are 'enjoying' that kind of weather here at home now so can't even fathom what we are driving toward. 

Unpacking is so much easier. It's all dirty, just dump it in the laundry room.

Books I'm taking?  They are all very different from each other:  To Kill a Mockingbird - I read it every year in summer.  Absolution by Alice McDermott,  Thirteen by Steve Cavanagh.  Three books for two weeks?  Well, you know...just in case.