Yep, I travel over 150,000 miles a year, which puts me at the top of the food chain in frequent flier status with my chosen airlines, which means I get upgraded to first class for free on almost every flight. But don’t go thinking it’s glamorous or special. It just means that since I often spend an average of 22 hours a week in the air, and 5-7 flights a week, I’m a mess! I’m a road warrior, fighting my way through airports, rental car lines, hotels with no towels, no time for coffee and a broken hair dryer which housekeeping promised to replace, and didn’t. And dont forget, i still have to “work” each day. Yes, do the math, and it comes to about 3-5 hours of sleep usually, so I try to sleep on the plane. But at the moment, I’m somewhere over Kentucky on wifi. Here i sit in first class on a Friday night with mud and salt caked on my boots (snow in Pittsburgh and Chicago), a torn sleeve, a chipped nail, a bad hair day, and about to eat my first meal, some sort of rubberized “chicken?”… And the guy across the aisle hates me because I guess my new cross body purse brushed his shoulder… I apologized, and tried to explain that it was my maiden voyage with this beautiful tassled glittery appendage, but I guess that’s not good enough. It’s ok though because I quit talking on flights years ago. Would rather sleep or work, or in this case, play!
This really is about my cross body purse, but first… I can assure You that when you travel, you don’t need about half of what you pack. Take inventory of what you actually used the next time you unpack from your suitcase. Then take everything out of your purse, and sort into two piles, “used” and “not used” . You’ll thank me for the epiphany. The last three years, Ive survived quite nicely with about half of what i used to haul around the map, and im rarely lacking for anything i cant get if i really need it. I take only travel size everything. And I have a whole system of pragmatism that dictates all that I do. No time to go into the pertinent details of my master packing system, because ive got to tell you about my new love…
On this trip, I decided to downsize my big over the shoulder purse to a tiny cross body purse, because all of this hauling and schlepping has just about ruined my already ailing neck. i had to admit to “self” that my big shoulder purse was probably much more responsible for my troubles than my 33 pound suitcase. So i took the risk and changed a major component in my travel strategy, which meant I had to downsize everything, and slash and burn others. I wrestled with parting with a lot of what I had been married to, thinking “but what if I need it?” The adventurous side of me won th battle, saying, ” tough it out! Now, I have a tiny comb, instead of a brush, hence the bad hair day (and no blow dryer that worked), One chapstick (a must when traveling), one lipstick, small tube of antibacterial hand lotion, immune tablets, zinc lozenges, a few credit cards and ID In a side zipper (no wallet). The only thing I ended up missing from my big purse was my Fedex #, but I quickly made a phone call and got it. Fedex is part of my routine… when I leave the studio, on the way to the airport, I have to drop by Fedex each trip to ship the props to the next city. I have prop boxes leapfrogging all over the us. They should have their own frequent flier miles… But back to the cross body purse… The verdict.. my trial run was a success… I’m a new woman! Follow my lead and be liberated!
My husband gave me the one I’m currently in love with for Christmas, and it’s perfect. But I WANT MORE! Its probably midlife crisis, but I’m loving fringe and tassels. So I’m logged in to wifi to get work done, right? Not! Here’s a few I have my eye on:
http://www.polyvore.com/leather_tassel_cross_body_bag/thing?id=12230336
http://www.ecrater.com/p/9383325/tassel-fringe-womens-handbag-shoulder
