The tour starts tomorrow, and I’m more than a little nervous. I actually think that it’s more like straight up fear, that borders on terror. I’m determined to have the habu vest thing to wear on the tour (I actually hope I’m wearing it tomorrow) but it’s not finished yet, and every time I sit down to knit, the butterflies in my stomach start acting up and I end up leaping up to clean something, or organize something or do something else that doesn’t really need doing.
I think I’m just about packed. I have enough clothes for 12 days (really I don’t, but I have a little bottle of Soak wash, and I think I can get through) and now I’m down to adding the good stuff. Book tours present a certain challenge to the human spirit. There’s a lot about them that’s good – the publisher’s support of the book is good, being with all of you is more than good, and as silly as it sounds, I know that at some point in the next 12 days, I will eat at least two breakfast burritos, and I like those a lot.
The biggest challenge is in the actual living of the thing. The planes, the cars, the hotels, eating in airports – I’m a homebody, and while I’m getting really, really good at travel now (you should get behind me in an airport security line if you ever get the chance, and I can bug out of a hotel room faster than a MASH unit, let me tell you) I still find myself a little nervous when I think about not being home with my stuff and my people for so many days in a row. So, here I am, adding the icing to my packing cake. The things that I bring along to make it just a little bit better, a little bit nicer. Here’s what I’ve got.
– good coffee beans, a tiny handcrank grinder and an AeroPress
– a mug from home, because nothing says despair like hotel coffee in a paper cup at 5:10am.
– a candle. (I’ve never lit it, but somehow it makes me feel prepared.)
-a present from my friend Jen, designed to solve part of the food problem on tours.
It’s a mason jar, a ziplock of large flake oatmeal, and a little box full of containers with goodies like coconut, nuts, seeds and dried berries. Add hot water and whatever fruit I manage to buy at that day’s airport, wait five minutes and I’ve got a hot, delicious, wholesome dinner. (Dinner’s the hard one. My day is travel and events, and by the time I get back to the hotel room, room service – if the hotel has it, is closed. The only thing worse than being tired in a strange place is being tired and hungry in a strange place.) Jen’s a genius.
-a knife, for cutting up fruit, or slicing a hard boiled egg, or whatever.
– a tiny little box of gourmet salt. It can turn the aforementioned egg into something a little special.
– tea bags. The brands that I like.
-Slippery elm lozenges, because I know for a fact my voice is going to try and quit on me somewhere in there.
– A bartender’s corkscrew, mostly for the beer opener on it. Every once in a while somebody gives me a great bottle of beer. (I love you guys) and carrying an opener means that I don’t have to use my keys to get into it, which I totally know how to do, and indeed, there is a key on there that I use just for that, in a pinch, but the opener makes me feel classy.
– Big ziplocks. For clothes I washed that didn’t dry before the next flight, and anything else I want to bag up.
That’s it. I feel pretty good about it, but I’m sure that there’s other frills I could get in there. Anybody got a genius idea that I should be tucking in there?
(PS. Don’t say yarn. That was first in.)
(PPS. Don’t say books. That was second.)