Immeasurably More

My business travel wardrobe can be described as Black. Grey skirt, black skirt, black slacks, black heels, black flats, black jacket.  The accompanying cardigans and t-shirts are in a variety of colors (including but not limited to black and white). My China ready wardrobe can be described as Blue. Blue jeans.  Blue T-shirts.  Blue sweaters.  Blue socks.  What isn't blue is white or black. Since nothing's changed but the color, why has my vacation packing taken three times as long as the business packing ever does?

"Bibliophilia is sometimes called bibliomania but should not be confused with the obsessive-compulsive disorder by that name, which involves the excessive accumulation and hoarding of books." Wikipedia, Book Collecting For those who may not yet have heard, my parents will be moving to a new smaller place at the end of the summer. For years, by leaving everything in the bedrooms we slept in as teenagers, my brother and I have deferred the hard decisions about keeping (or not) "things we can't live without" and "things we can't live without only after Mom has reminded us again that they exist". But all that has to end now and we are taking a page from the current administration's playbook and throwing money at the problem, or rather, at a '5 X 10' X 8' storage unit. My work began today by helping to bring shelving to the storage unit and starting to go through my share of books stored in closets, on shelves, and in boxes in the gar...

I'm finishing up a week in the UK and will soon be sliding my two light blue vintage American Tourister bags into the furthest corner of the bedroom closet in the company apartment until I come back in three weeks. One of these bags is a carry on and its contents got me pulled aside at security twice. (I'm not counting the third search which was completely random.) So, I'm going to list its contents here as a warning to others. Loose contents: Scarf pieced together from discarded fabric samples One pair well worn black gloves The Settlers of Catan board game Marnier Lapostolle brown glass bottle Books Larousse Pocket French-English Dictionary British American Language Dictionary From Word to Image Robert Frost poems Eyewitness Travel Guide - Great Britain Eyewitness Travel Guide - France Michelin map book - Paris Bescherelle La Conjugaison pour tous Small spiral notebook with French vocabulary notes Tamashi Radio Alarm clock box containing Pale pink wash cloth Year of the g...

I've just spent half an hour sitting cross-legged on my bed surveying the chaos that is my apartment. You can actually fit quite a lot of stuff into 500 sq. ft. And it's mine: the books I've enjoyed reading, the movies I can recite huge portions of, the clothes that make me look good (I think) , the dishes my high school bff gave me in memory of our trip to Paris. This gold tea pot with the orange dragon belonged to my grandfather, and you can pry it from my cold dead fingers. Seriously. I mean that. I'm trying to be reasonable, to balance the cost of shipping or storing the things I own now with the cost of replacing them with new things later. How much do I really need ? Less is more, as they say, and most of this is just going to weigh me down. But rationality is having a hard time sinking from my head to my heart tonight, so, I'm giving up for now. Maybe it will be easier tomorrow. ~~~LeAn

I have several freecyclers stopping by today to pick up various things that I have found around my apartment and no longer have any use for, like VHS tapes and 35 mm film. It is a wonderful feeling to know that they will go to someone who can use them and an even more wonderful feeling to know that, however small their size or slight their weight, I will not have to see, pack, carry or ship them ever again. Similarly, I've been giving out a few things around the office, so far mostly Kinder Surprise toys accumulated from my previous travels. There is general agreement among my co-workers that the Kinder Surprise engineers are geniuses of their trade. If you don't believe me, you design a super-hero-chasing-a-super-villain-over-NYC toy that will disassemble and fit into a plastic egg about 1 1/2 inches long. Two other things that will be leaving my apartment today are a library book - Bill Bryson's Notes From a Small Island , which I enjoyed, but don't think is his b...