Airbnbs are tiny glimpses into other people's lives

Earlier this month, I spent a week in Denver for a long overdue vacation, and stayed in an airbnb. The private apartment was a small one bedroom, but it definitely lived up to the “quaint” description with its exposed-brick fireplace. I love poking my head into other people’s homes and opening drawers and cabinets, not that I’m looking for secrets or anything, but because I’m curious on how other people live. (Example: I was delighted to discover the washing machine in the kitchen of an airbnb in Amsterdam).

The real gems in this Denver apartment were in the kitchen: apple cider vinegar, two (!) aged balsamic vinegars, a big tub of Folgers coffee sitting atop the fridge, baking soda, pancake mix, ranch dressing, buttered-flavored syrup, Aunt Jemima syrup, distilled white vinegar, coconut oil, molasses, Grand Marnier, grated ginger, whole gloves, ground chocolate, chili power, honey, two bags of microwave popcorn, and a bag of Allegro ground coffee found in the freezer, enough for just two cups.

The pancake mix made sense to me because if you’re on vacation, you have time to make pancakes in the morning and why wouldn’t you? As a lover of Chinese cooking, the Kikkoman soy sauce made sense. (I used to have the same kind of bottle in my fridge at home). But the molasses?! I was straight up befuddled by this almost full jar of molasses. I had lots of questions.

• Who bought the molasses? Are they a baker of some sort? Was this leftover from the owners?

• What did they make with it?

• Why did the buy it in the first place? Was it for a fancy event?

• What else does this person like to cook?

• What else did they buy?

• How do they feel about molasses? Like is this one of those things you can’t live without (like butter, for me) or did they get a bug up their butt to make a certain dish that required the single tablespoon of molasses that was used?

• How long has it been sitting in the cabinet?

• How long did they stay in this apartment? Did they intend on using the molasses for more stuff?

There’s no way to answer these questions, and on the exciting scale, finding a jar of molasses in some stranger’s cupboard doesn’t even rank compared to seeing a male elk walk across the street to a mini golf course (which I totally saw happen my second day in Denver).

But staying in another person’s home is chance to glimpse how someone else lives. The walls that stand literally between us vanish for the duration of the stay. Hotels are cold and sterile-feeling, designed to make you feel like you’re the first person ever to step inside that room. Any traces of another person are gross and cause to go somewhere else.

Of course private airbnbs lack the intimacy of staying in the home with someone else, but in private accommodations, there are these ghosts of the people who had stayed before. Thinking about their leave-behinds, I wonder what other people did during their stay. Were they alone? In town for work or vacation? Did they snowboard, hit a bar in Lodo, drive over to Estes Park, take in a museum? It’s these differences that make us human after all.

After a week, I left behind my own traces: butter, peanut butter, an apple. Tame and boring things, compared to the molasses.

A new essay in the works on birth control and sterilization

I’ve been pretty pumped about the new year so far. I like change and new things so I am all about diving into 2020. One major reason is a new writing project that’s been percolating in the back of my head since the fall. The project might ultimately become a book -- a collection of essays. This is exciting and scary since it’s been a while since I’ve thought beyond just a few hundred words. 

Before I get too carried away and overwhelm myself, I’m focusing on one thing, one essay on the topic of voluntary sterilization procedures for women. (More commonly referred to as getting your “tubes tied”). I know someone who had this done recently— though her fallopian tubes were removed as opposed to tied or clamped— and that inspired so many questions (why, what prompted the decision, how does it feel, etc) I decided to write about it.

I also wanted to write about it because getting this procedure done never occurred to me, though I’ve known for a long time I didn’t want to have kids myself. Not one doctor mentioned tubal ligation to me, even though every gynecologist I’ve seen in the past 10-plus years knows I don’t want to get pregnant. A gynecologist even suggested I switch to an IUD when I told her I didn’t want kids, but she didn’t say anything about other options. I feel like tubal ligation or similar should have at least been mentioned. Does this happen to other women???

I’m really interested in learning what other women's experiences were like with voluntary sterilization procedures. How did they learn about them? Were there any obstacles to getting it done? How did they feel afterward?

So with this new writing project, I'm taking a new approach. Typically my focus is on personal writing (my life, really) whether it’s essay or memoir. With this topic, I’m approaching it more broadly, with the primary goal of learning from others instead of exploring my own ideas. This is actually not too dissimilar from the research approach I use in my day job, which is often geared toward understanding specific experiences, behaviors, or attitudes. 

Even though this writing project has nothing to do with my day job, it’s exciting that I can actually employ those skills in my writing. This is not something I thought having a non-literary job would do. Yay!

Which brings me to an ask: I’d love to learn about more women’s experiences getting any sort of voluntary sterilization procedure, whether it’s a tubal ligation, a salpingectomy, or something else.

I know this kind of thing is private and personal so I created a short, anonymous survey. If you’ve had a sterilization procedure yourself, please take a moment to fill it out. If you know of anyone who’s had one, send them the link! I’d appreciate it so much. OR just respond to this email and tell me your story! 

Any information will be folded into an essay on the topic. I don’t know what the angle is yet, but an ulterior motive is to acknowledge and discuss a procedure I suspect many of us don’t know much about. At least I didn’t.

I’m excited to see how this new project develops, and grateful for any support along the way. Stay tuned for more in 2020!

Where are all the women business travelers?

I was so paranoid about oversleeping and missing my 6 a.m. flight that I was WIDE AWAKE at 2:30 a.m., 45 minutes before my alarm went off.

As always happens, there was no reason to be so antsy about getting to the airport so early (but I’m an anxious traveler so I can’t help it). No traffic, and security was a breeze. I was flying to New York for work, for just two nights. I was pretty jazzed about it. I wasn’t on some crazy project deadline, and I was staying in a corporate apartment right around the coroner from my company’s office in Dumbo, a trendy corner of Brooklyn with stunning views of both the Manhattan and Brooklyn bridges.

I tried to dress the part, wanting to fit in to what I imagined a bunch of people getting on a 6 a.m. flight would look like (sales people? consultants?) while also fitting into the casual hip vibe of the design agency I work for. I chose my new midnight blue cashmere sweater, with gray jeans and my plum-and-blue slip-on tennies.

Nearing 5:30 the hoard starts to gather around the gate in anticipation of boarding. And I notice: there’s a lot of dudes here. Like, a lot of dudes, solo, in suits or blazers, with hardcase suitcases and airpods stuffed in their ears. I counted 5 suits in various shades of blue. I kept hearing Tom Haverford’s voice, “Brooks Brothers boys make dope suits.” (I’m not sure he said that exact thing, but you get the idea).

Obviously, these people were going for work. This was even more striking on the plane. As I scooted toward my seat in the rear, I passed rows and rows occupied by men with thinning brown or gray hair. Close-cropped haircuts. A lot of light-colored button ups or gingham prints. Pretty much everyone was white. It was striking how similar they looked.

Where were all the women? There were obviously some. But so few. I thought of the stories you hear about women and work, of women opting to stay home, pausing or giving up careers because childcare is too expensive. So I couldn’t help looking at the sea of manly scalps thinking, I wonder who’s staying home so you could get to the airport by 5:30 in the morning?

Because that’s the thing. Unless you live alone, if you have pets, or others that depend on you, what arrangements have you made that enable you to be gone for a few days, a week, or longer?

I wonder about the negotiations, the discussions between the one that stays home and the one that travels. Who is left behind? What makes it OK to be gone?

While traveling for work, you enter a kind of stasis. Your life continues on around you but you’re separated from it. You have a narrower field of vision. I know I can easily spend long hours working because my daily routines and responsibilities have vanished. I don’t need to leave the office by 5:30, and can easily work over ten hours, or late into the night without thinking too much about it. It’s actually freeing in a way, this sharp focus on the task at hand instead of keeping one eye, and part of your focus, on the clock.

But the opposite is true for the one who stays behind. I’ve been that person too. Responsibilities have increased as we keep up all those small things that make “normal” life moving along: dog walks, diaper changes, feeding the kids, cleaning house, buying groceries, buying sundries, and on and on.

I admit I have a pretty sweet deal. No kids and my partner works from home and can manage dog walks and doggy daycare. We recently hired a company to clean our apartment twice a month.

Do these business travelers make enough money that they have a nanny to rely on? A housekeeper, a cleaning service? To what extent does their partner bear the brunt of taking care of what’s been left behind? Is travel a regular thing or occasional? Did all parties sign up for their roles or has it just… happened?

Curious if I was observing a reality or my own biased indignation (of course these are all dudes!), I looked up some statistics and they were not as bad than I thought. 60% of business travelers are men (in contradiction to another site, which said 47% were women) and the average age is about 46.

This one shocked me though: the top 10% of business travelers spend about 4 weeks of their personal time on a plane each year. One month of time, gone, on a plane! I love to travel and I don’t mind being on a plane (it’s reading time!) but that much time is nuts.

A friend of mine, a tech consultant, worked in Boston during the week and flew back to Chicago on weekends. This went on for months. But assuming she did this commute (that’s how she described it, as her “commute”) for a year, she would have spent almost nine days on the plane total, assuming the average flight time to Boston was two hours and 14 minutes. Not to mention the many nights she was actually away from home.

Even for a travel-lover such as myself, even though my ego swells when I get to tell people, “Oh, I’m going to New York for work” (65% of Millennials who travel for work view it as a status symbol), even though part of me likes the simplicity and focus of the work while gone, a month is too much time. Because that means more time in the airport, dealing with that chaos and the perennial stressball threat of delays. Because that means being away from your life, friends and loved ones. When could you try this new restaurant or go to this show? When could you indulge in your hobbies? When could you get a warm hug from someone you love?

And because I do not relish staring at a wall at 2:30 a.m., wondering what traffic is going to be like on the way to the airport.