If only...

If only I had any vacation left this year or several large bills laying about unaccounted for...because if I did, I'm pretty sure I'd book a vacation to one of the amazing places shown on the Unique Home Stays website. Oh, and you'd be invited (assuming we didn't max out on the # of people.)

New Paltz...not quite as far as I'd like to go...

I mean, where to start... A castle in the Scottish highlands? A beachfront estate in Cornwall? A luxury B&B in a Tuscan villa? Torture, pure torture.

If only. Maybe someday?

I am....

I am a bag lady. Not in the traditional sense where I live on the streets and consider a door stoop my hovel, but close enough. Also not in the romantic traveler way where I'm traipsing around Europe with my Louis Vuitton luggage hopping from Relais & Chateux to the next (let's be honest, the days of back packs and hostels are WAY past. Too many horror stories to find it fun and "campy." Crunch is not for me.) That being said, I'm a bag lady nonetheless - sans the LV,  my Longchamp must suffice. One day I'll upgrade, I swear. How did I come to this realization? Well, it's been coming for a time, but today, hiding under a building awning on the Upper East Side, attempting to avoid the deluge of rain pouring sideways at me, I was struggling with my huge bag to exchange my high heels for flip flops while attempting to stay upright as fellow commuters rammed into me (I swear it was intentional...damn New Yorkers!) Love them, hate them, now I'm one of them.

In the past few months, I've moved, I've been house sitting, I've lived in between my new apartment and my boyfriend's apartment, I've evacuated the city to escape a hurricane, I've escaped the city for weekend adventures, I've gotten up at 5:30 AM to get to the gym, departing home with all my accoutrement for the day ahead, and it's wearing on me. I've become a bag lady. And I swear one day it will catch up with me. I'm only 32, but there will come the day that I'll be holding my future child hunched over, the bag lady comeuppance.

I'm not alone. Many of my friends here in New York know this same lifestyle. We live out of our bags and have learned to travel (near and far) in the most economic manner, while still torturing our shoulders, backs, and arms. It just is. Somehow the boys manage in some alternative universe (including my boyfriend whose things appear in my bag...hmm.) One day we'll grow up and live in homes and have cars and not be bag ladies. Our friends in Minnesota and California do it, which of course means we will too, right? Um, Bueller, Bueller?

As a good friend reminded me today, I live in one of the coolest cities in the world. And despite the humidity, hurricanes, apparent earthquakes, rain deluges, snowmageddon's and what have you, being a bag lady in this place is a sacrifice I'm willing to make. But Connecticut is still calling....