Unexpected Expenses

As Brandon is a member of the Foreign Service, our lifestyle varies somewhat from the typical middle-class American.  A lot of aspects in fact are very desirable - we don't pay rent or most utilities, we get paid plane tickets back to the states to visit family, when I come back to deliver #3 I'll get a stipend to pay for food, our moving expenses are always paid for, we live in foreign countries that have inexpensive hired help (thank heaven!!), we live in countries that have a favorable exchange rate (for Americans),and we don't have a mortgage or car payments.  One our acquaintances in Cairo termed this lifestyle "sacking cash."

A few days ago, however, I stumbled on a particular downside to the move-around-the-world-on-the-goverment's-dime lifestyle - luggage.  When I graduated from high school, my parents gave me a set of two American Tourister suitcases.  I used those suitcases a lot.  They come home with me every summer and Christmas stuffed to the zippers (back in the good old days of two 75-lb bags per flight [and 3 if you flew Southwest]), carried my life out to Vienna, around Europe and Turkey, and back, carried it out to Egypt and back, and on numerous and sundry smaller trips.  But when we made the move out to Arlington, Brandon and I realized that the suitcases (including Brandon's suitcase that had schlepped his things around Ukraine for two years) had reached the end of their usefulness.

And that is how I found myself on my favorite shopping tool - the internet - contemplating the order of six (yes - six!!!) brand new very expensive Pathfinder suitcases.  All of which are now marshaled in my basement awaiting travel orders to Egypt.  And the cost?  If we put them in our 1996 Honda Civic, they'd be worth about half the value of the car.