Let me tell you a story. Once upon a time, not so long ago, there was a girl named Laura who was lusting after a pair of taupe ballet flats. At $175, said ballet flats were far and away more expensive than most of the shoes the girl had ever purchased in her life, and so they lived only in pictures in her Internet browser. But one day, the girl got a bonus at work, and so she decided to splurge on the Expensive Shoes.

She felt a slight tremor upon clicking the purchase button, followed immediately by a thrill of excitement as she imagined the soft feel of the leather and the comfort of the cushy blue sole.

One day not very much later, the Expensive Shoes arrived. The girl couldn’t wait to get home and try them on!

Opening the Expensive Shoes was as delightful as one would hope a $175 experience would be. They came in a beautiful box, with a sassy flower on top. And the blue soles popped as she pulled them out of their package.

But when she put the Expensive Shoes on, her heart sank. They felt tight on her heels, and the insole was not as supportive as she had hoped. And, she felt like her toes were going to poke through the fine leather of the toe box! A battle was waging within the girl. She wanted the Expensive Shoes. She debated keeping them despite their discomfort, because they were, in fact, quite beautiful shoes. Her desire was strong, but the girl knew that she would not be happy with the Expensive Shoes.

Reluctantly, the girl packaged them back up and prepared to process a return. The girl started the search for the perfect ballet flat all over again. Somewhat to her surprise (for the girl was picky and had been utterly consumed by lust for the Expensive Shoes), she found a suitable replacement without a lot of searching! And so the girl placed a second order, from a different website, for only $79.99.

The shoes arrived, and once again the girl raced home excitedly. When she opened the box, she thought, “That doesn’t look like the color I ordered! Maybe my browser just wasn’t displaying the color quite right.” She slid them on and was dismayed to find that they were far too small. “Perhaps an extra half size up would do the trick,” the girl thought, because otherwise the shoe seemed like an excellent replacement for the Expensive Shoes. As she took them off, she caught a glimpse of the size inside the shoe–and it was actually a half size below what she had ordered. The company had sent the WRONG shoes! Wrong color, wrong size. A second flop.

The girl filed a ticket to tell the company that they had sent her the incorrect shoes. They, of course, apologized, and said they were shipping her the correct beauties. And yet, the next day, the girl had a voicemail telling her they were unable to ship the item and had issued a refund to her credit card.

“But I don’t want the money,” the girl whined to herself, “I want the shoes!”

The girl rallied. Her lust for the Expensive Shoes had been transferred to the newer, less expensive flats, and so she had to have them. The girl did a Google search for the name of the shoes and, to her surprise, found them listed on Amazon, and for a fraction of the price!

The girl’s frugal heart beat just a bit faster as she followed the link, selected her color and size, and found that they were in stock–though only two pairs remained! Heaven forbid she should dally. The girl added them to her cart and completed the order with the terrifying ease made possible by saved data in her Amazon account.

This fairytale is not yet over, because it’s possible the girl missed her chance and she’ll wake up tomorrow to an email from Amazon telling her she had missed out again. But the girl has hope, made even sweeter by the knowledge that she’ll wind up with an extra $130 dollars left in her bank account.

The moral of this story is that lust can be a powerful motivator. It can make you click crazy buttons on the Internet and boldly defy all your personal budgetary strictures. But sometimes the Expensive Shoes are not all they’re cracked up to be. So if you find yourself lusting after the likes of a pair of shoes, let the magic of Google do your searching for you, and you may just find your glass slipper after all, without breaking bank.

Andy and I eat dinner in front of the TV 99.99% of the nights that we eat together at home, and I’m not angling to change that. I know that flies in the face of all the posts on the Internet about intimacy and connecting with your spouse and raising your kids right, but it works for us, and here’s why.

Photo Credit: Pawel Kadysz via Unsplash

1. It gives us something to talk about.

Look, Andy and I are both introverts, and we’re not always the best at talking to each other. The times I’ve spearheaded our eating at the table the conversation has tended to be stilted, and I hate listening to people chew.

For the first 4 years of our marriage, Jeopardy! was our show of choice. We recorded it and watched it the next night. We would speak the answers (er, the questions) out loud and get competitive. We would comment on the players’ jobs and outfits. It wouldn’t be uncommon for us to pause the show when something on it spurred a conversation topic.

That’s the key, though. If you’re using the TV to escape, albeit together, and you sit like blobs watching it, you probably should try to eat at the table. But it’s a conversation starter for us, and we don’t mind clicking pause periodically. It’s like a box of Table Talk cards but that moves and talks back.

Another perk is that I feel like it helps us avoid the iPhone trap. It’s still tempting in slow parts of the show to mindlessly scroll through social media, but it’s easier to resist when you’re engrossed in a plot or intellectually stimulated by a story.

2. It gives us a shared context.

We have pretty different preferences in movies and TVs, but we overlap in a few places. Finding a show to get invested in together gives us something in common. It’s not an experience, per se, but it’s akin to one. Plus, we each stretch our comfort zones periodically and are often pleasantly surprised to find ourselves enjoying something the other introduced us to. Or, we both dislike the same show and get to talk about why.

Some that we’ve particularly enjoyed together (aside from Jeopardy!) are:

• Friday Night Lights (y’all, I MISSED those guys when the show ended.)
• Veronica Mars
• Air Disasters

• Broadchurch

  Most recently we watched Band of Brothers and then embarked on Pacific, its much-later corollary. Sometimes we also throw in an episode or two of something educational like NOVA or Makers.

  On occasion we’ll get a few episodes into a show (or heck, sometimes a few seasons–lookin’ at you Dr. Who, The Americans, and Homeland) and mutually decide we’re not into it anymore. Sometimes one of us will decide to keep watching it on our own. (I have several shows I watch without Andy.) And then also on occasion I convince him to watch an HGTV show with me. #winning

3. It gets us physically close to each other.

Physical touch is not my primary love language. A friend of mine joked one time our freshman year of college while we were all crammed on a twin bed watching a movie that she didn’t like being touched, and I scooted away and believed her because it didn’t seem unreasonable to me. (The real truth is she LOVES to cuddle. I mostly don’t.) But like, when you are married to someone, touching is a nice and good thing, and I have a tendency to forget that!

When we sit on the couch next to each other watching TV and eating off of our TV trays that we got at Walmart early on in our relationship, we’re primed for some physical contact once our plates are empty. That usually happens before the show is over, so then we’re left with a half hour or so of time to sit next to each and hold hands, something that we might not prioritize or make time for otherwise. We also take the opportunity to torture the cat with our touches and make her do ridiculously cute things that she pretends to hate but I hope secretly loves.

I understand why a lot of couples prioritize sitting at the table and eating, but I’m satisfied with how we do it. If we had children, I would probably transition into family dinners without the TV, but this is my family right now and it works for us!

How far away are you right now from a place where you could fill a glass with water that you could drink without worrying about getting sick?

Photo credit: Image by Steve Johnson via Flickr under CC 2.0

I’m sitting on the couch in my loft, and I’m about 12 feet away from two different sinks–the bathroom, and the kitchen. Now, I normally don’t drink tap water from my bathroom, or even the kitchen faucet for that matter. Because about 10 feet away from me is also a refrigerator that holds a filter from which I can get cold, purified water.

My parents live in Louisville, Kentucky, and I don’t like the way the water tastes there. I can’t pinpoint what it is exactly, but it’s not my favorite. The bottom line, though, is that I can drink it safely, and it’s a huge privilege that I even get to decide what water I prefer.

The most difficult time I’ve ever had getting enough water was one time on a backpacking trip. It was August, in Tennessee, and it had been a dry summer. There was one spot in the park where we were hiking that had water, and it was about half a mile out of our way. Once we got to it, we discovered it was basically a trickle down a rock face. We spent a long time letting our filter bottle fill up, filtering it, pouring it into a different vessel, and then doing that all again. We had to carry about 3 times as much water as we usually do, since we needed it to camp that night and then to drink the next day on our hike out.

It was heavy.

On the last hill up to our campsite I couldn’t go anymore, and my husband walked up it, dropped his pack, and came back down for mine so that I could climb up unencoumbered.

We still did not go thirsty.

We chose to go into a situation where water was limited.

We are privileged.

Last week I had the opportunity to go on a Water:Walk hosted by Blood:Water in Nashville, Tennessee. If you’ve ever been to Nashville you’ve probably noticed that there’s a big river down the middle of it. We gathered as a group and walked about a mile on an overcast, dreary day carrying big blue jugs. We trudged down to the water’s edge in the shadow of the NFL stadium and filled our jugs.

Water is heavy.

The mile back went a good deal slower. I found myself switching the jug from hand to hand every few steps. It was awkward to carry, and heavy.

While we walked we listened to Gertrude’s story. Gertrude lives miles away from the nearest water source, which is down a steep embankment, and is muddy. She rolls a barrel every morning down the path, fills it painstaking jug by painstaking jug that she pulls up from the pond, and the rolls it back to her home.

My jug was a fraction of the size of Gertrude’s. It had a lid so nothing could spill, and a handle. Girls in Africa sometimes tote water vessels that weigh almost as much as they do, for miles. Others schlep buckets that have no lids or stoppers, and they risk losing a portion of their precious liquid on the long walk to home.

I’m not sure I could budge a vessel that weighed the same as me, let alone transport it across a distance. I’m not sure I could walk carefully for miles knowing that any drop I spilled was just one less drop I’d have to use during my day.

I take water so for granted.

Many populations in Africa are ravaged by HIV and AIDS, and many of those same populations also lack access to clean drinking water. Blood:Water was organized to help provide them with the things they need most: clean blood, so to speak, and clean water.

The water many communities in Africa have to drink would make anyone ill. Add to that the fact that too many of their inhabitants are immuno-compromised, and you have a deadly combination. Imagine being ill with diarrhea but knowing that the only fluids you have to address your dehydration are likely what made you sick in the first place. Imagine being unable to go to school as a child, or work as a woman, because it’s your responsibility to bring water for cooking, bathing, drinking, and caring for your animals. Imagine having nowhere to use the restroom in private and nowhere to wash your hands afterward.

That’s a reality that all too many people face.

I thought about them while I walked with my water, while people driving by gave us funny looks, while the sky opened up and began to drizzle on me. I had volunteered to do this thing and was patting myself on the back when we finished for having done it, as if it were an aerobic feat like having run a marathon. It was a challenge that I surmounted. But it’s a challenge many women have to face without volunteering.

I felt sad thinking about Gertrude rolling her barrel day after day after day. My shoulders ached a little the day after my walk, and I can only imagine how hardened her muscles must be from years of that labor.

I don’t know exactly how to end this post. I’m not an expert on the solutions to this problem, and I don’t want to come across as sanctimonious. I also know trying to bring about lasting change in communities is hard to do well. I don’t want to claim that Blood:Water is the end-all, be-all solution, or even the absolute best place to donate.

But I would like to encourage you to think about water, and to think about what you can do to help. Heck, even people in our own country on the west coast have been made much more aware of water’s preciousness this year in the face of rampant droughts. If you’re moved to get involved, check out Blood:Water’s list of solutions or donate to a different water-bringing charity of your choice.

Water is heavy. Your dollars can lighten the load.

Has anyone read Lolita? It’s been on my to-read list for quite some time, and I finally checked it out from the library, but I have not cracked for over a week now after having read the first couple of pages.

This seems to be my reading schtick: when I’m deep into a book I’m loving, whether it is fluff or good literature, every spare minute I have I spend reading it.

When I’m in the middle of a book I’m not enjoying, I do everything BUT read during my spare minutes.

I’ll sit down to read it occasionally, and with intention, but it’s not what I want to do when I have just a moment.

Ideally I would always have a book going that calls to me from its pocket in my backpack, but that’s not realistic.

So through Lolita I will continue to trudge.

P.S. Don’t worry, I have fully embraced not finishing books that I’m not enjoying. I just haven’t even given poor Lo enough of a chance to make that call yet.

September saw a few books that I couldn’t put down.

I’ve been re-reading the Little House books piecemeal, but I recently brought them all to my house from my parents’ attic and have since read three.

This one I literally read in an afternoon. The descriptions in the books are just SO rich, and the stories they contain are so foreign to my modern existence. I love them as much as I did as a girl, which is a pretty cool feeling.

Plus they are obviously about me, since my name is Laura. (mic drop)

I don’t know how I came to add this book to my list, but I ate it up. It was not particularly great writing, but the Quiverful movement is so fascinating to me, and it was engrossing to follow the (fictional) story of a girl close to my own age who was grappling with it. I then spent a fair amount of late night time on the Internet reading real-life Quiverful stories and shaking my head in dismayed wonder.

I read Mary Oliver’s book of poetry Evidence to satisfy the collection of poetry task for Book Riot’s Read Harder Challenge.

I have to say, I didn’t enjoy it in sum as much I enjoy the bits and pieces of her poems that have been Pinterest-ized. In general, I think I just don’t like reading poetry as much as I used to. I’ve become too pragmatic in my old age, and I can’t seem to see the point. The words are beautiful on occasion, but I’d rather have a story these days.

I finished the audio book of Yes Please.

In the “I made it through but didn’t love it category:”

(Check out Slate’s Audio Book Club discussion of it to hear a better fleshed out version of what I basically thought.)

And, hoo boy:

Slate nailed it again on this one, which was my book club’s September read. If you take it as what it truly is–a draft–it’s much more bearable than if you expect it to be a novel. It needed some editing, which it didn’t get because it was rejected. There were passages where I could barely even track with what was going on because they were so couched in historical allusions. FWIW, I wasn’t as upset with the picture painted of Atticus as most of the Internet seemed to be. I sort of didn’t see the Big Deal that was positioned as the crux of the novel. I didn’t ruin To Kill a Mockingbird for me. It almost just felt like an entirely different set of characters from an entirely different author.

If you’re into books, you should probably read it. That’s as rousing of a recommendation as you’ll get from me.

That was 8 books, if you’re counting. I’m DEFINITELY going to finish the Read Harder challenge–only one to go, and I’ve settled on the short A Christmas Carol, which I will pick up closer to Christmas. I’m at 54 books for the year, and I’d arbitrarily like to hit 75, so I’d better pick up the pace! A few more Little House books should help me along…

I started a new job at the end of June, and in August I had the opportunity to travel to my company’s headquarters in San Francisco. I hadn’t been to SF since I was a kid, and I also realized I really had never been on a business trip, either! The closest I had come was going to a conference with my co-workers in Huntsville, but somehow that felt different. We drove to Florida all together, and worked our booth at the conference as a team. It was very structured and I had a crew with me. I’ve traveled alone before, but I’ve always had someone waiting to meet me on the other end, so the being alone aspect was as unfamiliar to me as the business aspect. So when I was confronted with the thought of an entire week in an unfamiliar city, I found myself getting nervous as my departure date drew closer.

photo by Gabriel Garcia Marengo via Unsplash

My goal for traveling to San Francisco was to meet a number of people who perform similar jobs to mine, and I dutifully arranged lunch and coffee meetings with many of them before I left. My workday calendar was a rainbow of hour-long meeting blocks, with random bits of time in between which I ended up needing, because many of the people I met with did not work in the same building and I had to walk between several office towers.

I was nervous about what to pack. Did people at HQ dress the same as we do in my office? What would the weather be like? How long of a walk was it from my hotel to various places I needed to be?

I was nervous about the hotel. What if I got there and my reservation hadn’t gone through? What if I got freaked out in the room by myself? What if it wasn’t in a good part of town?

I was nervous about getting around. Would I feel comfortable walking places by myself? Would I be able to figure out the public transportation?

I was even nervous about flying, despite having been a flyer my entire life. To my comfort, I encountered a manager from a different department in my company also on my flight! He assuaged some of my worries about using company funds on the trip, and even dissuaded me from my original plane of taking BART to my hotel and talked me into getting a cab instead.

I felt like quite the cosmopolitan by the time my cab dropped me at the door of my hotel. I had flown to a city alone, gotten to my hotel, and here I was to do Business.

The week went well. I was exhausted every day by the time afternoon rolled around, due to the time difference and also to stretching my introverted nature to its limit with meeting so many new people. So in the evenings I mostly struck out on my own. And here are my tips for solo business travel (which, hey! you can probably apply to other travel as well.)

1. Have a game plan. The weekend before I left, I looked at public transportation routes from the airport to my hotel. I looked at the office and my hotel on a map, and mapped out at how I might get between them. I double checked my appointments, and sent a few emails to follow up on where exactly some of them would be taking place.

2. Make some time for fun. (Budget for some vacation even if you’ll mostly be spending company money.) I listed out a handful of stores I wanted to visit and restaurants where I wanted to eat. I bought a ticket to take a touristy boat tour of San Francisco Bay. I messaged a friend who moved to SF, as well as my uncle who lives there, and made tentative plans to get together. Keep it reasonable, though, as an unfamiliar work schedule will probably be more tiring than you think.

3. Check in at home and at work. Look at pictures of your cats! Chat with your coworkers that you usually see every day! It will help you feel grounded while you’re gone and ease your transition once you get back.

4. Take advantage of your hotel’s amenities, and don’t scoff at paying for other conveniences. My hotel had stations on every floor where you could refill a water bottle, as well as snacks in the lobby in the evening. I had free Wifi in my room, so a couple of mornings I did some work in my pajamas before I fully tackled my day. And sometimes, paying for something you might not normally choose to pay for (e.g. an expensive cab from the airport) is worth it. You have enough around that’s unfamiliar and exhausting. Make life easier where you can!

5. Pack a few extra outfits to change into. I spent much more time outside walking between buildings than I normally do, and I found that at the end of the day I wished I had something to change into from my work clothes (which, let’s be honest, were still jeans). I felt grubby after being out in the city so much, plus I just wanted to be a little more comfortable when I was heading out on my own to try and have fun. I packed very minimally in a carry-on sized bag, but thankfully had picked up a few new shirts and ended up wearing all three by the end of the week.

6. Don’t think you know better than Google Maps. That street you thought you saw that coffee shop on is probably not as close you remember, and you should probably trust the map lady to get you there. Similarly, if the city you’re visiting has an app for its public transportation system, download it! It will ease your mind when you’re standing at a bus stop wondering whether there’s actually one coming in the direction you need to go.

7. Use services like foursquare and recommendations from friends to make the most of your trip. It stinks to wind up eating at some mediocre unknown place because you were being aimless and ended up too hungry to find something other than what was in front of you. Wouldn’t you rather know you were eating somewhere that a friend of yours used to frequent for date nights, or that has the #3 ranked cocktail in the city?

8. Conversely, don’t feel bad if you need to stay in your hotel room one night and watch numerous episodes of Say Yes to the Dress. (Hypothetically, of course.) It gets exhausting to have to make a decision about every moment of your day. So much of life at home is on auto-pilot. Sure, you have to decide what to eat, but most of that decision has been made when you went to the grocery store on Sunday. If you miss out on seeing a landmark because you need to recharge, don’t feel bad. Did you accomplish the work your company paid for you to come do? Great! That’s an achievement in itself. The landmark will still be there another time.

9. Talk to random people and find little points of connection. It’s lonely being by yourself or with new people all day. Somehow finding a tiny little similiarity with someone, no matter how small, can help you feel seen, and a little less lost. I took myself out for a drink on my last night in SF and had a very nice chat with the bartender, which was uncharacteristic for me but a balm to my weary traveler soul that night.

10. Eat your veggies. Your digestive system will thank you. I drank a lot more coffee while I was gone, and ate a lot more sweets. Veggies are good.

Do you travel much for work? Any tips on making the most of solo business travel?