This Butch wife and her Femme wife are headed out into the world over the next month, so the blog will be on vacation for a while. I did want to talk a bit about preparing for such a trip. Packing can be tense. What to take? How much to take? Predicting the weather at the places we plan to visit well beyond what any official forecasters are willing to do can be exhausting. Do you need two tubes of toothpaste or will you be sharing with others? Do you lay your clothes flat in a suitcase, neatly folded or rolled? I’m a roller, myself, as it seems to keep the wrinkles down better.
I read a Ricky Steves travel guide-book once that recommended the ideal amount of ‘stuff’ to take on a trip. It broke down something like this: 2 pair of pants, five shirts, five pair of underwear and socks, a sweater and jacket, a swimsuit just in case, maybe a hat if you’re a hat person, and your toiletries. Seemed sensible. After all, you can always go to a laundromat and wash things each week. And since you really don’t tend to see the same people all the time, repeating your daily garb won’t be apparent to anyone you run into the next day except you and your wife. However with my wife, color coordination and a theme are essential to appropriate packing. I won’t go into the details about this, but suffice to say, if everything you take doesn’t mix and match, you are forever banned from stepping onto foreign soil. (I keep it simple with blacks and whites as these go with anything.)
Do you notice a general tension before you take off on a trip? I do. My housekeeper from growing up used to call this being ”journey proud.” Great term isn’t it? Journey Proud. Being excited about going to a place – even in our case where we don’t speak the language well, are not sure how to order our food easily, can’t read the road signs, and have absolutely no idea where ANYTHING really is. Now that’s journey proud.
Being journey proud doesn’t stay with you. We’ve always found once we are out in the world and away from our home country, the journey pride tension disappears almost immediately. Our desire to experience different cultures takes over, and getting lost is a general state of being for us while on the road. Eventually we do find ourselves with enough maps, but the stories we get into while lost have always been fun.
So to my loyal followers out there, thank you so much for encouraging me to keep writing. Please ask your friends if they would like to follow the blog as well. We will, however, be offline for a month. We do a travelogue while on the road for friends and family and will continue that during this trip. For all others, please be patient and I will get back into the blog in August. Until then, bon voyage, y’all! (Do you think the French will mind the colloquialism? Probably.)
Butch Wife Tip #18
When getting ready for a trip, be easy on one another. And if you are journeying to another country, check out the gay laws before you go because some places will shoot you for being gay. Those places I would recommend you avoid.
Julie Butch Wife Extraordinaire-in-Training
Julie
lindageb
Bon Voyage – see ya in August……..
have a safe trip! gute fahrt!
Thanks so much…talk soon