SO after much laundry doing and outfit changing, I have finally come up with the perfect 8 outfits for Paris that will all fit into my backpack. The bad news is, there is no possible way for me to later stuff a couple of bottles of wine in there too. So I am taking a really ugly but checkable tote bag on the plane with me that will hold laundry later so that wine can be imported. Yay wine.

I also figured out which purse to take with me. I have two awesome travel purses. One is a dark red beaded hobo I got as a Hong Kong import special. For years I was the only person around with this bag and got lots of comments, but lately I keep seeing the same bag in green. The other is a pink, brown, red, green, black handmade bag covered in roses that I got in Mexico. It is really gorgeous and has awesome pockets, but it is too much for this trip. The good news is that my red hobo has been to Europe before, so it’s been road tested.

I’m also trying to wear earrings. I made a pair of lever backs out of a set of vintage rhinestone clipons. They are very simple, chic and not able to fall out of my ears. The problem is that my ears don’t like earrings. I have spent the last 24 hours way too conscious of my ear lobes. They hurt and I keep rubbing neosporin with pain reliever on them. But i want to wear earrings, I look cute in earrings. What is the good of having pierced ears if you can’t use them? Besides, I did not suffer through the torment of an at home ear piercing with a safety pin and a potato at 15 just to not be able to wear earrings now.

Any piercing freaks out there? How long must one suffer through aches lobes before the nerve endings give up the ghost?