Sunday, March 06, 2016

Be prepared, or my perfect storm of stupidity

Like most right-minded individuals, bird thinks it's foolish for me to keep acting all ad hoc about my travel preparedness, since I appear to be on the road more often than I'm at home. She advised me to pull together a really well-thought-out travel cosmetics kit and then post about it. She is the boss of me, so I started working on it.

I decided my problem was my cosmetics bag, because it's huge. It's so big that I dig through tons of bite-sized tubes, bottles, and jars only to discover that I've forgotten to pack the toothpaste.

I decided to divide and conquer: I would use one bag for skincare, one bag for makeup, and one bag for hair/teeth/body. A use for some of those GWP bags I'm always accumulating, hooray!

I thought through everything thoroughly. I would include a small bottle of cleansing oil PLUS a foaming cleanser PLUS micellar water PLUS cotton pads--and that's just getting my face cleaned off. My new kit also offers two kinds of exfoliation (chemical and granular) as well as eye creams, Vitamin C serum, hyaluronic acid serum, day cream, night creams, sunscreen--you name it.

I planned to take pictures, list the products, and describe why I selected them over the weekend, while I was in Bloomington, Indiana.

On Wednesday night, after I picked up my daughter at the airport, I drove into Chicago and realized I needed gas. Except the station I pulled into has the most expensive gas in all of Chicagoland. (If you're curious, it's the BP at North and Clark.) So I only bought $10 worth, figuring I'd buy more gas in Indiana, where it's much cheaper.

You know where this is going, don't you? Or not going, because I RAN OUT OF GAS.

I was stuck on I-65 somewhere near Lafayette, Indiana for two hours waiting for the AAA guy to come by with a couple of gallons so I could limp to a gas station, fill up, and then finally get to my destination two and a half hours later than originally planned.

So why should anyone listen to a word I say?

5 comments:

  1. My horror would be stuck on a freeway or a dark street with a broken down car.....you poor thing!!!!

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  2. No, no, I don't deserve any sympathy! Let's just hope I learned the valuable lesson of filling the tank before getting on the highway. And I think the fear I felt every time an 18-wheel semi roared past me at 80 mph will reinforce the lesson nicely.

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  3. You know what kills me about this story? KILLS ME?
    That you wouldn't spend the money to fill the tank.

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    Replies
    1. I know! It's my inner New England cheap-ass Yankee refusing to spend the extra 30 or 40 cents a gallon, which at most, would add up to a whopping $8.00. And you know I'd drop that on a British Vogue or a not-on-sale Revlon lipstick in a heartbeat. GAH.

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  4. I do that all the time. Refuse to pay gas higher than what I know I can get elsewhere. But I never ran out of gas. Not yet anyway. And gas here is somewhat a bit more expensive than in the US. It's roughly $6,92 per gallon ...

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Gentle Readers:

For the time being, I have turned off comment moderation. Please don't spam; it's not nice.

xxx, Poppy.