I’m headed to my parents’ house right now to celebrate Christmas for 8 days straight. Like Scandinavian Hanukkah, but with more carols. In preparation for the trip, I ate all of this week’s left-overs cleaned out the fridge, laundered the linens for the house-sitters (albeit too early since I slept in a Snuggie last night), and wrote these incredibly helpful pack and do-not-pack lists.

Pack List

- Giant Suitcase: There’s no sales tax in MN (vs 10% in NYC), so basically this means everything’s on sale. And I need more clothes, like the West Village needs a Syphilis scare.

- Presents for Family: We share an Amazon account, so I unintentionally generated order confirmations to them with pictures of the gifts. Shrug.

- 4 Delta Drink Tickets: Reason number infinity why Delta is my favorite airline. They snail-mailed me drink coupons prior to my “upcoming holiday travel.”

- MacBook, Kindle, iPad, iPhone, iPod: I get DT when we’re separated.

- Elastic Waistbands: The best discovery ever was the stretchy pencil skirt. It’s like yoga pants for grown-ups.

Do-Not-Pack List

- Wrapping Paper: Because see #2 on Pack List.

- Pets: Last time the stray cats and I flew together, I got stigmata hands trying to carry them through the metal detectors. So that won’t be happening again.

- Greek yoghurt: I previously had a nasty debate with a TSA agent over whether it was a liquid or a solid. Agree to disagree.

- Cosmetics: I don’t need to be running around with my chalky CoverGirl, when I can sticky finger some nice products from my mom and sister. Thanks in advance, girlfriends.

- Phone charger: I finally looked myself in the mirror and admitted that I will never ever ever in a million years remember to pack my phone charger, so let’s park it on the do-not-pack list.

…

READY. SET. BLASTOFF.