Why is it that when I go out of town for a couple of days, I
- go to the storage closet and choose an appropriately-sized suitcase/travel bag,
- pack my own suitcase without bothering any other living person for help or input,
- do extra laundry for my packing and for my husband during my absence,
- make my own travel arrangements,
and even
- cook extra food to tide over man and cat during my absence,
but when my husband goes out of town for a couple of days, he
- keeps changing his mind about the suitcase he wants and moves his stuff from bag to bag, getting more and more frustrated and thus behaving more and more testily to his long-suffering wife,
- cannot seem to make decisions about the clothing and sundries he needs to take and actually packs summer pants despite overwhelming evidence that the current month is, in fact, January, and moreover, his destination is a ski resort,
- sends his aforementioned long-suffering wife (LSW) running up and down the stairs multiple times to launder piles of clothes that he hasn't worn for years, but nonetheless thinks he would like to pack...only to ultimately change his mind about including them,
- gets irritable when gently reminded that he is going away for two days and two nights, and not two weeks, and should perhaps consider revising his packing accordingly,
- refuses to place any trust in the fact that all hotels in North America supply their guests with such basics as towels, shampoo, conditioner and soap, and demands that his LSW locate travel-sized shampoos and conditioners for him, which he then rejects as being of inferior quality,
- does not even know the name of the hotel that his buddies have booked so that his LSW can look it up on the Internet to find out whether he will regret it if he doesn't bring gym clothes,
- happily borrows his LSW's roll-on deodorant and tube of body lotion, but spurns her travel-sized tube of Sensodyne toothpaste on grounds too nonsensical to mention here?
The drama is far from over, as he is not leaving until tomorrow, and I'm sure he will come up with half a dozen new ways to torment his LSW until then.
My theory is that he doesn't really want to go. He's quite a homebody at heart. But he's going to have a great time and will ultimately be glad he went. I already really miss him!
I'll admit I'm way better at packing for short trips than long trips. What I really hate is going to a place where the weather is changeable, so I have to bring both warm and cool clothes. It adds up to more clothes than I would normally want to have to stuff into a suitcase.
I find the thing that worked best for me clothing-wise is to stick with one neutral and one color. For example, red and black, purple and navy, brown and cream/beige. The shoes need to be neutral. The neutrals like brown, black or navy stay on the lower body and I wear color on my upper body.
In the old days I didn't have a system and I always ended up packing random items which I then couldn't wear because I hadn't packed anything that would go with them.
And don't feel bad about taking a sweatshirt to St. Louis! I think that no matter how hot it is, you always need at least one warm item in case you find yourself sleeping in a severely air-conditioned room where you have no power to adjust the temperature, and your teeth start chattering.
So, on behalf of my long-suffering family, bravo for putting up with your husband's vagaries! I'm sure he'll thank you when he gets there and sees that he does not, in fact, need shorts to go skiing. XD
My husband and his bulging suitcase are now gone, or to be more exact, are on a bus heading down the highway. As he kissed me goodbye, he said, "I don't wanna go!"
Well, hey, I guessed that. But I think he's really going to have a great time.