Personal blog of christian
writer & fallible mom
Katy McKenna Raymond
in Kansas City, Missouri
Katy is represented by
Greg Johnson at
WordServe Literary
Read more Katy at
LateBoomer.net
Recent Posts
- Try
- Becoming Brenda Starr
- Off Beat
- Scattered
- That’s It
- So I’ve Finally Signed With An Agent. Now What?
- The Spoon
- Sciatica
- Sweetheart
- A Woman’s Train of Thought Has No Caboose
- However much we own, we are all still living on borrowed time
- After all, when restaurants shrink portions, they don’t shrink prices.
- As with everything in life, balance is key.
- Slow down, you move too fast…
- Yeah, I know. I have issues.
Syndicate
E me at katy @ ngenius.com
Five Days, Four Nights, And No Harrison Ford In Sight
By the end of this post, you’ll be wondering why I mentioned Harrison Ford in the title, so I might as well tell you now. It’s because we just watched that movie with him and Anne Heche, the one where the two of them crash his plane on a deserted island (Man! I almost spelled out “desserted” island, which sounds SO much better!). It’s called Six Days, Seven Nights, or Seven Days, Six Nights, or something like that.
There’s also a second very valid reason why I included Mr. Ford’s name in my title: Because I Can.
My good buddy Kath and I will leave my driveway at approximately 6 am Wednesday morning, along with Chauffeur Doug, who will drop us at the airport for our flight to Dallas. I am as ready as I can be for the American Christian Writers Conference, except that—contrary to popular advice—I have NOT memorized any elevator pitches for my novel.
I’m more of a wing-it type of chick, which could explain my current lack of published book credits. Hmmm….I’ll give that some more thought, but for now it’s time to pack.
I thought I’d let my readers—especially the men—see something of the quandary we women face when we set our faces like flint to fill the suitcase. I’ve set out eight pairs of shoes, one evening bag, one purse, and four computer bags for possible inclusion in my packables. A wheeled computer bag is absolutely going, but it’s mostly for the airport. I would feel goofy wheeling it around at the conference, so one of the smaller shoulder computer bags will also be making the trip.
The question is: Which one?
As for the shoes, they’re all going. If you have to ask why, you’re most likely one of those fellows I’ve been thinking of.
I realized when pulling all these bags out of the closet that I’d given my luggage tags to Kevin when he left for Switzerland 16 days ago. (He’s doing great, by the way, but BOO-HOO! I miss him…) I finally found one attached to a duffel of Doug’s, with his business card stuck into the hard plastic enclosure. On the back of his card, he’d written “San Juan,” and while that should have taken me back, it took me no where.
Has he—or have we—ever been in San Juan? I need to take better notes!
    |
Anyway, I removed the tag from his bag and replaced his business card with my own. Then I looked at the rubber-band type thingie meant to fasten the tag to the bag. I poked one end of the rubber band through the little slot on the tag and looped the other end around the handle of the bag, but then what?
A total dead end. Unless of course I proceeded to make a jumbled knot out of the flexible rubber, hoping against hope that eventually an unnatural attachment would take place between the independent-behaving tag and the aloof bag.
Fifteen minutes, people. That’s how long I attempted to do the math of this particular puzzle before hauling the bag and my sorry behind in to Doug, the resident genius. Even he managed to be completely perplexed for sixty seconds, but with him—unlike with me—the solution made itself apparent.
Instead of merely poking the end of the rubber band through the slot in the tag and calling it done, he finished that transaction by looping the tag all the way through the waiting band. Then he advanced to Part Two of the whole messy operation, which involved the same technique of looping around and through the suitcase handle.
Have I made myself perfectly clear? Because by now, it should be plainly evident to any intelligent reader that this post should have been called “How Not To Pack.”
But I sure wasn’t mistaken when I called myself “fallible,” huh?
- Katy, I'm both happy for and envious of you for going to the writer's conference--someday I want to go to one!
As for mentioning Harrison Ford just because you can? Well, I've been known to post pictures of Russell Crowe and Gerard Butler for that very same reason. :)Posted by Cindy Swanson on 09/19/06 at 06:21 PM - ...also why pics and posts about my kiddos abound at hmmm...
best to you, katy, as you head out to your adventure in Dallas!Posted by lisa on 09/20/06 at 01:41 PM - Katy...Have a blast! (And I watched Six Days, Seven Nights the other night, too. Fun flick!)
Posted by Bridget on 09/22/06 at 09:59 AM
- Cindy, I can picture you in this crowd!! You are a fantastic storyteller and such a people person--you would love both meeting writers and being a novelist. That's what I REALLY think. And I got the idea to mention Harrison's name from your fun posts!
Lisa, I love the pic of you and your kids at the park, I think? Very tender....Had a fantastic trip, thanks for the well wishes.
B--Email on its way to you shortly. :)Posted by Katy on 09/25/06 at 10:34 AM - katy, we were at cocoa beach, just up the road from our current home, waiting for space shuttle atlantis to take off. well, i was..my kids were having a jump-off-the-boardwalk-as-close-to-the-same-time-as-each-other-while-whooping-it-up-to-scare-the-snowbirds-for-an-hour-contest...
(glad you had a ball in dallas, btw :)Posted by lisa on 09/25/06 at 08:20 PM - Did you really take all those shoes? Gimminee cricket, girlfriend. I'm surprised you weren't the one to pay for overweight bags instead of me. I guess your new name is Immelda.
Posted by Kath on 09/27/06 at 08:20 PM
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