I hereby proclaim that I am going to travel with as little flotsam, jetsam, and cosmic debris as possible this summer. Once upon a time, I was driving Mouse home from nursery school. I was probably trying to tune out the Wee Sing Dinosaurs tape. Mouse, of course, had other things on her mind because suddenly, out of nowhere I could figure, she said something like, “Wouldn’t it be nice if we could just take our whole house with us to Houghton Lake?”

At the time, it almost seemed reasonable to me. We regularly travel up and down the Great Lake State to either Houghton Lake or Fin Family Moominbeach. Back in those particular days, our vee-hickle was always filled with kid stuff. Car seats. Strollers. Diapers. Pottys. Bouncy seats. Toys and games and clothes. Stuffed aminals? How could I forget those. I was driving along that morning and probably the song about the brachiosaurus school bus/friendly playground slide was on and I was thinking something like, “y’know, that might not be so bad. Just tie the Landfill up to the back of the Jetta/Exxon Valdez/Indefatigable and haul the whole blasted mess up to wherever.” I kind of envisioned the house flying behind us like a balloon with stuff falling out of the corners. I think Mouse may have had a different vision.

As my kids grew up, I started to schlep books and craft stuff and later on computers and all of the related electronical crap I always feel compelled to haul around, whether I am gonna use it or not. I have just about had enough this year. I am sick to death of schlepping stuff in and out the door of the Landfill. I am sick to death of keeping track of it all when I get to my destination. And then schlepping it all back into whatever vee-hickle(s) we have and eventually back into the Landfill. Why do we travel with all this crap? I flew to California for five days last fall and I did it all with carry-on and I don’t remember missing *anything* I left behind. In fact, I could’ve left a few things behind that I took out there. But I had pretty much what I needed. Underwear and my laptop and my camera. Oh, and a memory card reader to get photooos onto my computer.

I’ve decided I’ve had it with hauling all kinds of carp crap. This summer, I am going to pack my clothes, my sleeping bag, my laptop and camera and the peripherals that go with those. Maaaayybe my “spanner”. Just because. Oh heck. Sometimes there’s a bit of food to be schlepped. I’m even going to try to keep that to a minimum. I am taaarrrred. I am sick of schlepping carp crap all over hell ‘n’ gone. Connecting with the people and/or place you are traveling to see is what’s important. Anything else? Well, usually you can buy whatever you need anywhere (ask me about Walmart bathing suits). Or maybe you’ll find something new and different to do.

Love y’all,
KW

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 1st, 2010 at 6:12 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.