Hi Sars,

I travel for business. I can’t get the luggage thing right. I need a garment bag so my clothes don’t get wrinkled because me? And an iron? Don’t get along. I have a wheelie garment bag, which is nice, and holds more than one of the old types that hang, but I still end up needing another suitcase for extra shoes, casual/workout clothes, et cetera. Then add in the toiletries — I don’t want to chance my shampoo blowing up in my suitcase — and I end up with enough luggage that I worry I alone might make the plane crash. I’ve bought a zillion different pieces of luggage in recent years trying to find the right combo and I just can’t seem to nail it.

I’d prefer not to carry on at all, but I don’t want my laptop going through the not-so- gentle treatment the checked luggage gets, so I end up with my computer bag and my pocketbook, a book or guilty pleasure mag, and checking the rest. Trying to finagle multiple wheeled pieces through the airport and into the taxi line is a pain. If the readers have any suggestions, I’d appreciate it.

Thanks, I am so NOT transferring my shampoo into one of those stupid travel bottles!

You’ll probably need to invest in a medium-sized hard-sided suitcase just big enough to accommodate your garment bag inside it — or that comes with a built-in garment/suit bag or compartment. My suitcase has one of those, and while it looks kind of frail, it works fine, and hanging up the contents after I arrive usually deals with any wrinkles.

Toiletry travel cases that are waterproof/spillproof are also fairly easy to find; if you don’t trust those, put together a pre-packed toiletry kit, for travel only, with travel-sized bottles of all the essentials — and Ziploc everything. Shampoo, shaving cream, Band-Aids and Q-Tips, tampons/liners, toothbrush and paste. Whenever you get back, go over the kit and replace anything you’ve run out of; then store it inside your suitcase and it’s ready to go for next time.

That should take care of the “having to pack everything separately” issue. For luggage, grab a Land’s End catalog; I can’t vouch for the pieces themselves, but they’ve sized their suitcases according to how long you’ll be away, which is smart, so you can look at the sizing and get a feel for what you’d need.

Readers, take it away.

Hiya Sars!

I’ve got another asterisk-filled list request. Books.

I’m the lucky summer student for my village museum. I do nothing at all. In fact, I’m up to three books a day. Yep. I read fast. So fast that I have joined my library, but am running out of good books leads. I just got through some major crap, and I’d like for that to not happen anymore. So here’s a list of what I already like with some examples of what I’ve already read.

~Teen girl books where no lesson is learned and no morals are shoved down my throat (Gossip Girl, The A-List)
~Trashy Adult Lit (V.C Andrews. Though all I’ve read of her are pretty much just Flowers in the Attic)
~Chick Lit (The first Bridget, Good in Bed)
~Fantasy (Phillip Pullman, Neil Gaiman)
~Mystery, especially food-related ones (The Tea-Shop mysteries)

Basically, nothing with a dying mother. Light, fun, but I also loved Jane Eyre, so I’m pretty much wide open.

Thank you to both Sars and the Tomato-ites.

Love,
Doesn’t anyone give a damn about the history of Waverley?

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Dear Waverley,

Well, obviously I have to recommend Pamela Ribon’s Why Girls Are Weird, and the “sequel,” which just came out, Why Moms Are Weird.

I also have to suggest V.C. Andrews’s My Sweet Audrina, which is the first of hers that I read and which oogs me out to this day.

You might also try This Is Not Chick Lit: Original Stories by America’s Best Women Writers, which is getting lots of good press, and Like a Hole in the Head, a mystery I thoroughly enjoyed.

Readers: Some recommendations, please — but also some restraint. Two books per email, and please do not try to get her to read Dostoevsky.

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Hi Sars! I have just had a baby. Everything is great other than that I have gone from a small B cup to a large DD cup. I’m about a size 6 or 8, so the result is that all of my old clothes make me look somewhat porn-star-ish, if they even fit at all. Conversely, when I buy clothes that fit the boobs, I wind up looking sloppy since the rest of the shirt is too large for my frame. Do you or your readers have any advice on finding shirts that will fit and flatter a nursing mom? I live in a smallish city in Canada, so any place that sells online would be an even better suggestion!

Mammoth Mammaries Making Me Miserable

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Dear Mam,

I feel you. …Okay, obviously I don’t completely feel you, but I have big boobs and a long torso, and it’s been a lifelong battle to find shirts that are flattering and don’t have that “stripper drape.”

Fortunately, the trend in the last season or two is towards much longer cuts in casual tops and tees; what you want is a long, lean line, but in a forgiving fabric like a cotton waffle. Delia’s has good ones, in long-sleeve and tank-top cuts — and they’re not too spendy. And Lauren tipped me to American Eagle’s long-and-lean tees. I don’t know whether those companies ship across the border, but that’s the type of thing you want — not tight, just cut slim to give you a longer, smoother line.

You’ll also want to invest in more v-necks — they make your breasts look like breasts, vs. the monolithic wall o’ boobage they can sometimes seem like in a crewneck — and shirts with some center detailing: buttondowns, center ruching, the sort of thing that directs the eye down a line vertically instead of presenting you more horizontally.

You can find more tips for dressing every possible figure here. Let’s see what the readers have to add.

[7/28/06]

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