And I'm Exhausted!

As our journey to the Midwest, the East Coast, and the South comes to an end, I have reflections and resolutions.

• I began my current trip preparation—one filled with special occasions—vowing, “It’s official. I’m done with trying to get everything I own for eleven days into a carry-on the size of a lunchbox. I am not in a contest to see who can travel the smallest, lightest, or most efficient! I don’t care if all three wrinkle-free pants go with all three easily 'rinsed out' tops for nine different outfits. I get bored easily. I am not going to see most of these people for another twenty years. I want to look my best—difficult at my age—and I have many nice clothes. I am taking a large suitcase—and a carry-on this trip!"

  
  

• Time changes make you wonky!

• Leaving Chicago where we visited popular places like Millenium Park, the soon-to-open Obama Presidential Center, the Art Institute of Chicago, a Northwestern School of Medicine graduation, a high school graduation, and a family reunion navigating crowds, I found myself wondering . . . 

• Whatever happened to pick pocketers?

In this almost cashless society we live in, where do they go for targets? Several times as people nudged or shoved me, I instinctively put my hand on my purse

—the worst thing to do as it provides a strong signal to the potential pick pocketer.

Where have they gone? Do they have a union? Did they get a government bailout. Did AI contribute to the pickpocketing demise? Or are they still active?

I’m thinking there are countless slight-of-hand, quick and agile folks out of work, their “profession” seriously downsized. Eliminated? Theirs was a talent certainly. Are they reinventing themselves? Where have all the pick pocketers gone? 

• The odyssey did not follow our plans, and we had to split temporarily in the middle of the trip with him heading to Connecticut and me, by myself somewhere between Chicago and Durham alone. Alone to haul nearly one-hundred pounds of “stuff.”

• Going forward, I will be packing in a carry-on the size of a lunchbox.

• Lastly, room service is divine.