The Bag Dilemma

Prior to leaving for Chicago this week, I spent two days packing for three people - me, Princess, and Pixie. (Hubster is on his own with this chore.) We've taken enough family trips that I've gotten pretty good at getting the three of us stuffed into one suitcase. I know exactly how many sets of underpants, socks, shorts, jeans, etc., to bring. What I don't know, what I can never figure out, is what purse to bring.

Well, purse isn't exactly the right word for it. I don't like to carry makeup with me, and I usually prefer to keep my wallet safely zipped in a pants pocket, so I don't do the girly girl thing and carry a purse. What I do like to carry is: a drawing pad; a mechanical pencil; an art eraser; a set of drawing pens; maybe some drafting tools; also a composition notebook and ballpoint pen for writing down any story ideas I get. If I'm thinking clearly, I'll also toss in a travel-sized bottle of hand sanitizer, my cell phone, and coupons for whatever bookstore I'm headed out to that day. So it's more of an art/writing bag, and I've got bags of various sizes set up with exactly this sort of kit. I've got a tiny one with the world's smallest drawing pad and notebook for quick trips out, a larger bag with Jack Skellington on it for when I want to look truly goth, and a sturdy red bag with water bottle pockets that's handy for a long day's adventure.

Unfortunately, these bags all work best for when I'm running around my home town. When I'm about to get on an airplane for a long trip, not so much. The problem is, these bags will only hold what I've already listed, but they will not hold my beloved netbook. My little Asus EEE is too big for even the largest of those three bags. I do have a messenger bag big enough to hold the Asus and all the other stuff, but that bag is too big to lug around on a sight seeing trip and it's covered in pins and metallic goo-gaws so it's no good for airport security.

What I'd like to get is one more bag, something in between the size of the red art bag and the big messenger bag, something I wouldn't cover in pins and something that would still hold a water bottle in case the kids and I get thirsty when we spend a day sightseeing. I haven't found that bag yet. This bag is the closest I've come so far, but as you can see, no pockets for water bottles.

I suppose I could go with a backpack; I do have a couple of those. But the backpacks I have are too big and heavy for toting around all day and I always worry about somebody sneaking up behind me and stealing something out of the bag when I'm not paying attention (paranoid, I know). So, I'll keep looking. For Chicago, I am taking a backpack, but I'm stuffing my sturdy red bag into it along with the netbook. That way I can leave the backpack and netbook in the hotel and travel carefree with the smaller bag during the day.

If you know of a bag that would solve my problem, send me a link so I can check it out! I really do need to solve this whole bag dilemma.

Freaky Fruits and Swimming Suits!

Ha ha! Look at that title. I'm a poet and I didn't even know it!

Ah hmm. Seriously though, we've had an interesting week. Michael left Tuesday for a training course in Houston, abandoning-- er, I mean leaving me with the kids. My knee is doing much better, so I was mostly able to keep up, but after a week on my own with those demon spawn, I am wiped out.

First thing we did after Michael left was hit the grocery store. Michael does all the grocery shopping, so I always use his trips as an excuse to buy the stuff **I** want. I didn't get much, just some fruit and side dishes that I knew he'd never in a million years pick up (curried veggies, anyone?). Cassie saw a star fruit in the produce section and immediately decided she had to have one. It just looked so freaky, but not nearly as freaky as the horned melon. If you've never seen either of these fruits, the star fruit looks like a banana sort of thingie with a star cross-section (in other words, if you slice it into pieces, you get lots of star shaped slices), while the horned melon looks like something Jacques Cousteau picked up off the bottom of a coral reef. It's a sort of neon orange see-slug thing. Or maybe it's a sea cucumber. Or are sea cucumbers actually a sort of sea slug? Who knows? It was orange, spiny, oblong and freaky and Cassie had to have it, and since **I've** never had one either, we got it.

I served the star fruit that night. It tasted... odd. Not really sweet, and not really tart. Sort of like weak kiwi flavored gelatin. The star fruit is yellow on the outside and yellowish on the inside. Cassie spent all of dinner telling me how much she just **loved** star fruit after only taking one bite of it. And that was the only bite she took. I had to finish the rest of the damned thing off. Blech.

The horned melon was very different though. It was freaky inside and out. On the inside, it's neon yellow-green, with sections like a pomegranate. Little round fleshy pods wrapped around a tiny seed. It tasted pretty good, definitely more like kiwi, but with a big juicy squish every time I bit into it. Both Cassie and Sam ate a couple of piece once they got over the color.

Ah, color. I never get enough of it in my life, and here's where we now talk about swimming suits. Since screwing up my knee the other week, I've gone back to swimming. In fact, I've decided just to forget about running and swim as much as I can. I'll be in the pool four days a week it looks like, but until yesterday, I only had one swim suit. So I ordered two more from Swimoutlet.com. I went with their grab bag option. Grab bag swim suits are $26 a piece instead of the usual $40. The only catch is THEY get to pick the color. You pick the size and the style, but THEY pick the color. The grab bag suits are all the colors that didn't sell the previous year, and now that I've got my two new suits, I can kind of see why. One of those suits isn't bad - it's a hot fluorescent pink and orange print that sort of looks like a 1960's acid trip. But the other suit... oh man, the other suit is a reversible suit. One side is Grape Ape purple and the other side is **lime green**. Both colors are eye-blinding.

But hey, for $26, it's not a bad suit.

Right?