On this trip I found out that the bag that I've been using as my carry-on overhead bag for 8 years is too large. Fine, maybe it's been too large this whole time but nobody ever called it out. I had to check it at DCA and they said I would pick it up in PHX but when we landed it had gone with our first plane from Omaha to Las Vegas.

This is the first time my luggage has been mishandled so I had no idea what to expect and that increased the anxiety. I was also dumb enough to keep my meds in that bag, but they were rushing me at the gate so I didn't even think about it. The biggest source of stress was knowing that there were going to be side effects from missing my medication. Anyway, we went to Walmart after the airport so I could get some underwear and hygiene stuff to hold me over.

When I woke up the bag was at my "destination airport," according to the text I got, and I arranged for drop off. It was fairly easy and didn't warrant all the anxiety that I had about it. I like to think that my bag had a nice night in Las Vegas. It turned out I had not packed any socks (they were waiting for me on my bed when I got home) and the toiletries I packed exploded/were ruined, so the trip to Walmart ended up being a lifesaver in many ways.

I went with my mom and we met up with her sister to visit my cousin and her husband in Phoenix, AZ, for winter solstice weekend. Our resident family gave us a nice compact tour of Phoenix in 2 days!

• Arizona-themed Air BNB
• Uptown farmers market
• Desert Botanical Garden
• Changing Hands bookstore
• Culinary Dropout (holiday pop-up)
• Breakfast at The Farm
• Skipped: We were going to do South Mountain but it was Silent Sunday, which meant we couldn't drive to the top.
• Scorpion Gulch
• Tonto National Forest
• Desert Belle Cruise
• Pita Jungle
• Goldfield Ghost Town

When I travel I try to have a "seek and find" type of goal, not only because it makes it exciting to spot stuff, but also because it makes me pay better attention to my surroundings. For this trip, my primary goal (besides relaxing and having fun and seeing cool stuff and people I love) was to spot a Christmas cactus. I ended up spotting multiple!

	The first one was at the Changing Hands bookstore and bar where I found my haunted Phoenix book as well as a book about dance and death theater in Paris which I picked up based entirely on the cover, but after reading all three introductions I can't wait to read the book and find out more about Mel Gordon and his fascination with death. This was the bookstore's Christmas cactus used to display ornaments that you could buy. It gives me hope that perhaps one day I could have a fake Christmas cactus in my home (artificial cactus Christmas trees cost less than classic artificial Christmas trees, FYI).
I found the second Christmas cactus at the bookstore too, but this one I brought home with me. It's a small ceramic light up cactus that came with a little booklet about strange holiday customs around the world. This year for Christmas I took home a "family heirloom" type of thing: a white ceramic Christmas tree, brushed with pink snow and lit with red lights. My grandma made it one of those "make your own ceramic tree" workshops. Apparently that's where most people's ceramic Christmas trees come from: They are not expensive, and they cost $30 to make in a workshop using a shaping mold, in the same room as 30 other (probably) ladies making their own trees. I don't know if that truly counts as an heirloom, but I like to think it does. And I like that I can symbolically tie my ceramic Christmas cactus to that meaning.
	I saw the third Christmas cactus sitting outside one of the shops in Goldfield Ghost Town, but I didn't buy it. I kind of wish I had. It looks like a pretty good table top tree, which is all I need in my life right now. (Even though I eluded to the idea of a 7 ft artifical Christmas cactus, I won't be getting one in my current space.) Sometimes I don't get things simply because I don't want to carry them. (Also this one most closely resembles a dildo and it makes me laugh.)
I am also counting this cactus with string lights from Goldfield Ghost Town like the previous one. They had the whole town decked out with Christmas lights and decor and there were a few cacti around, but this one had the most lights and attention on it. It's sitting next to an all-lights Christmas tree with an American flag topper and a giant gravestone for the Unknown Prospector so it was very spooky and quite Western and a nice way to wrap up this seek-and-find goal.

This was an awesome trip and I'll definitely be returning with better sun protection clothing and smaller carry-on baggage.

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