packing problems

Okay, so my first packing problem is that I haven't really started yet. My flight departs in 25 hours. My trip begins in 19 hours. My laundry is mostly clean but not folded. A list is made but it is ambiguous and incomplete.

But my big packing problem is the one I just discovered. My luggage smells like pee. I know, I know. There's really no denying I am the crazy cat lady now. The question is, when and how did the luggage get peed on? It seems to have happened when the bags were nested (as the two biggest bags / outer layers have the stench) but they are almost always stored on end, and this is too much stink to be from vertical marking. This happened horizontally. The bags have been on their side since last night (Monkey has been sleeping on them, thus he too smells of pee), but nothing is wet. Just very stinky. So the stink must be old. Hell, for all I know the bags could've been peed on in one of the crazy cat houses I was in last (my mom's, my friend's...), but really, the evidence suggests this is not necessarily true and even if it were, it would only be marginally comforting.

I guess when and how it happened doesn't matter. And why we'll never know. The real question is, what do I do now?

I suppose I could run out and buy a new big bag. I needed new luggage anyway. The last time I flew with a "Damaged" sticker wrapped around my bag to hold it closed and one of the pockets was sewn shut where a second zipper had failed. But I planned to get something cool off the internets, not something equally crappy from a department store, and I really don't want to spend all day going out to SLO spending money I don't have.

I could have used my old duffel type bag for supplementary space but that poor thing was peed on and tossed out long ago. (That culprit was OC, who did the deed right in front of me...) And I already "donated" all my super old (pre college era) luggage to the thrift store (sadly, just this year...).

I could spare the expense and just pack really really lightly. Oh, how proud would Dad be if I only brought carry on? I'd probly end up checking the bag anyway. I hate being burdened by real life personal baggage (in and out of restrooms - yuck, up and down escalators - scary, bonking around stores - discouraging...) and I can never really lift it safely into the overhead compartment... But really I just can't see myself packing that lightly. My favorite oversized sweatshirt would pretty much fill the only non-stink bag that is left.

I could just cry. As my pee stink covered cat snuggles my lap. As I wonder why I agreed to be away from home for two weeks anyhow? I hate traveling. I always have. And now I hate it just a little more.

After I cry I guess I will go to Costco. I sure hope Monkey doesn't still smell like pee when I get home.

Oh, and just cuz I should make some token effort to tie in the food theme - the only thing that's gotten better about traveling lately is that airlines seem less likely to serve those icky honey roasted peanuts. Why they would serve anything so wretchedly aromatic in such an uncomfortably intimate environment is beyond me. Hooray for all the poor peanut allergy sufferers who have spared me any future torturous inhaling of a hundred people's collective peanut breath.

And just so I don't sound super whiny, I did once get a really cool airplane snack. They were little goldfish shaped like airplanes. I think I was on Southwest. I loved the idea so much I kept the package. Cuz I am a pack rat.

An overweight crazy cat lady pack rat with a drinking problem and bad hair, who needs to go shopping for luggage now.