Packing

Life Photographer Margret Bourke-White Sitting Amidst Contents of Opened Suitcase
by Alfred Eisenstaedt
print for sale at art.com

I finally started packing for my trip to Longview. Didn't get far. Mostly dug out all the soft-sided bags and purses from a good sized duffle down to small zipper pouches. Pulled some hanging clothes out of closet and put them inside a large raincoat in lieu of a hanging bag. Tho I actually have a hanging bag but am storing out of season and too-small things in there and don't want to pull them out and leave them at the mercy of Merlin and Ed for three weeks.

I have been aiming at packing light. Ha. I couldn't pack light if my life depended on it.

I still haven't lived down the last trip when I filled both the back seat and the trunk with my stuff. But then I was going for what I thought would be a two to three month stay that turned into a six month stay. This time I'm only going for three weeks tops.

I've asked my sister to request several of the library books I was in the middle of when I had to leave last summer and one that I'm in the middle of here now but can't take with me as it will be due over a week before I return. Asking for those six or seven books means I shouldn't need to take so many from here. Ha.

I thought I wouldn't be bringing my laptop since it's screen died the Sunday before Xmas. But my sister suggested I bring it so she can ask the guy that does work on their computers advice on getting my files off of it.

Then there's my fiction and poetry portfolios--the notebooks filled with the printouts of my best work so far. And the handwritten notes for the story world that accumulated during NaNo--mostly the family trees and names with descriptive tags i.e. the beginnings of character sketches.

Then there's the crocheting. Why do they have to put crochet thread on those huge tubes. That makes them so hard to pack around. I know it would be silly to take all ten or fifteen of them but how do I choose? And since I'm hoping to give away several more bookmarks I'll need to take the ribbons too won't I?

And then there's the sweat pea embroidery on Mom's sweater that I didn't finish yet. Finish? Ha. Haven't got it out to try to work on it since October.

And I haven't even begun to think about the HABA--Health and Beauty Aids--arrrgh! Don't want to think about them.

I can't get pictures off my camera or get to the ones stored on my laptop so I went hunting for pictures of packing for travel online and found that one gracing the top of this post. I felt some better about my own packing seeing all that stuff spread around her there. Compared to last year at this time when I was packing, I am going light. Relatively speaking.

There's just no way I could travel on a bus or plane. Which is why Ed is driving me to the Rice Hill truck stop on Friday to meet my sister there who is driving down from Portland where she will be leaving Mom art our brother's home.