I thought I’d have a little fun today with the differences we experience in our house when getting ready for a business trip.
My husband preparing for travel:
1.) Make sure hair is freshly cut.
2.) The night before, pack bags. Wife has already ironed shirts and will be folding them to pack.
Me preparing for travel:
1.) Wash all clothes down to the last item so family will have clean laundry while I am away.
2.) Iron husband’s shirts so he will have them for work.
3.) Pack husband’s lunches for the week.
4.) Make special trip to grocery store to buy food to prepare for absence.
5.) Prepare dinners so all they will need is to be reheated. Be sure to include detailed instructions on reheating so as not to receive a phone call asking questions during a meeting. This week’s menu: Vegetarian pizza, tuna rollup, barbeque chicken, baked tacos.
6.) Trip to salon.
7.) Errands that cannot wait.
Your turn:
How about you? Does this sound like your house?
I prefer to pack the morning of my trip, while my bride will start filling her suitcase days ahead.
And I, too, like a fresh haircut.
My only other consideration is adjusting the lawn mowing schedule so it won’t need to be cut when I’m gone. (My wife has run over trees and clipped the house a couple times, so she’s banned from the riding lawnmower — maybe that was her plan.)
I’ll tell you this little secret…I LET things burn on the grill. I do. I let ’em fry like an egg on a black car in Santa Fe in July.
Why?
Because the whole grilling gig is too hot. It wrecks my hair and makes me feel like I’m in a toaster.
And I’m afraid of blowing up my house.
Go ahead and judge!!
You think my husband doesn’t know that?
Maybe. Maybe not.
But I ain’t asking!!!
I am having the BEST time reading all your stories! Keep ’em coming!
I once was at an Oregon Christian Writers meeting in Salem. During the early morning introductory stuff, someone asked the members in attendance, “When is the last time you wrote?” The presenter was giving away a book to the person who’d written something closest to the meeting’s start time.
A man stood up and said just before he got in his car to come to the meeting. He won the book.
Why? All the women in the room had been way too busy to write: they were all cooking breakfast, packing lunches and ironing shirts.
SO true!!!
I take my wife to writers meetings. They are a treat for both of us.
I decided a long time ago I do too much for everyone!
My husband usually waits until the morning he is leaving to pack and then gets frustrated because it is talking longer than he expected and he is running late. I used to try to help or encourage him to pack the night before. Now I kiss him goodbye and go to the gym 🙂
This is so my house! And then that list quadruples when the whole family is getting ready to go on a trip together, yet the husband’s list stays strangely the same – haircut and a few clothes. I wonder if this varies by personality type, since I already tend to be the list maker, planner, organizer, type A anyway.
I am almost convinced that my family thinks the “Tooth Fairy” has a twin sister named..”Packing Fairy”. My husband and kids put a few things in a bag that they need, but all the other items such as..where we are going..when are we stopping..and most importantly..what are we eating..is something that magically happens with a wave of a wand and some glittery “ta-da”!
So true!!
In our leaving preparations the house MUST BE CLEAN! I cannot come home to an unkept house after being away. But yes, my husband packs the night before while I finish up the laundry and make the kids drink the last of the milk.
What’s an iron? /puzzled glance around house/ I have one. It’s from Lord-only-knows-when. The kind you set on the stove to heat up. Or a pretty decent defense weapon in a pinch. You’d have to get pretty close up to use it, but the thing weighs a ton.
I pack early. I pack a lot. I take everything I might need. And the kitchen sink.
Or at least the laser jet.
Except for when we took seven of us to Florida, then I seriously considered the sink.
But for ACFW [the only conference I go to and only remotely “business trip” I’ve ever been on], I take more outfits than I could possibly need, because what could be worse than spilling purple mashed potatoes and gravy all over you twenty minutes before you’re the hostess for a session and have nothing clean to change into?
My husband? His first real business trip is the week after I get back from Indy. We’ll find out what he’s like as a packer. As the one staying home, he’s wonderful – though my kids did end up in some buffalo wing bar last year. And since we both drive, no flight times to remember ;). Easy peasy.