Top 10 Things I wish we'd brought to NYC

Now that I'm home in the relative comfort (and thrift!) of my own apartment, I keep remembering things I wished I'd brought to NYC with me. The first of likely many more such lists to come, and in the spirit of the Big Apple's most annoying son, I give you.... (drum roll please, Phil....)

The TOP TEN Things I wish we'd brought to NYC:

10. Purell. No, really. If you'd seen the subway elevators (which you soon will when we post S&P's photo of one such), you'd need no explanation.

9. Fancier Clothes. It's true that NYC's citizens are the hippest and brightest people in the country - while a nation struggles with an obesity epidemic, I'm convinced I was the fattest person in Manhattan while I was there. We were surrounded by hip, wealthy, beautiful people, fully a third of whom were pregnant. S&P rocked the Park with her tangerine dress and decollete, but I struggled to put two pieces together that matched and weren't streaked with genuine NYC road dirt from my hands.

8. A better haircut - As above - This may be horrifyingly superficial, but this was the week on which my poofy mane of blonde hair decided to grow itself all out again after being tamed by my hairdresser's thinning shears only two months ago. In almost every picture, I appear to have a mud-coloured mop on my head. I plead humidity.

7. S&P's running clothes - here I thought that I was travelling with a marathon runner, and the one thing she didn't bring was her running clothes - and we had access to Central Park and the coolest, most beautiful 3.8 mi running route around! I lovingly packed my "running" gear and visualized myself running off the poundage I was doomed to gain at the seemingly neverending yummy places to eat by sprinting through CP in the afternoons. I have to say though - even if S&P had brought her stuff, I'm not sure how we would have fit it in. We packed as much in as possible and we were STILL coming home at midnight and waking up at 8am exhausted and slightly delirious.

6. The Baby Whisperer: Dad and/or Buffy would have been a good fit for the plane ride from Vancouver to NYC, and even for the countless screaming children who seemed to follow us (read: S&P) around. It was uncanny - from the moment we set foot on the airplane and noticed that no fewer than four small children were tucked around us, we were beset with shrill screams and wanton cries at bone-chilling levels. The hellions kept us up most of the red-eye flight from Van to NYC, and their ilk showed up all over the city. A good baby whisperer would have been just the thing to soothe these calls from the wild - and saved us hours of bellyaching about "parents, these days!"

5. A journal like I usually carry while traveling: It was silly of me, but I tried to be all digital and set up a great set of lists on EverNote, a web and PDA-based service I have an app for on my iPhone - in the days leading up to our trip, I collected bits of info about where we should go, websites, opening times, discounts, subway stops, etc. all in well-organized searchable lists... all of which were not readily available because for some reason I couldn't connect to the 3G system (iPhone internet) while I was in NYC. S&P's crackberry, on the Edge system, did just fine and in fact bailed us out of a few mean Pinkberry cravings.

4. A few hollow legs. Seriously - the sheer plenty of tasty things to eat and try was a bit dizzying. The stress I've spoken of in our last few days was at least partly made up of too many options that we couldn't decide. Nobody wanted to eat too early lest we get too full and pass a Pinkberry we had to leave untried. I'd say we ate well and not too decadently, but the prevailing sense for me was one of being too full too often.

3. Some sort of small purse on my person - not just an excuse for a syllabic pun, I really struggled with keeping things at hand but secure enough to not be a target. Safe to say that both of us were very cautious of our selves and belongings what with the stories we'd heard about personal security in the Big Apple - but for me, as the one who brought around the laptop and carried odds and ends for both of us, it was too hard to always be taking on and off my backpack just for my camera and wallet. Yet keeping it between my knees proved hazardous both to my belongings and S&P's sanity as she was constantly scooping up errant belongings off of the ground. I have never dropped stuff so much in my life. I've decided I need to design a sort of chair-based pack much like the chic waist pouches that the designers were making a year or so ago and you sometimes see on makeup artists or (or handymen, in leather). This would string around the front "knee bar" of my chair frame and allow for secure tucking into pockets on the inside of the frame while providing easy unobstructed access at any time with no chance of the dropsies ruining the holiday. It's the next big thing, folks. Line up for your shares here.

2. Packaged Oatmeal. We had this great idea that we would save ourselves the cost of breakfast by bringing oatmeal to eat in the morning in our hotel room - breakfast we both eat daily anyway. However - it proved just too inconvenient what with a Starbucks and hot, fresh coffee just around the corner. We ate breakfast in our room the first night and not since. It just wasn't the same to what we make at home, and they wouldn't let us put anything in the bar fridge of our own - so no milk or yogurt. I think a box or two of the packets of flavoured oatmeal would have done the trip and saved us a lot of fuss.

1. Gloves. The fact that I was too disgusted at my hands throughout the trip to take a picture to show you the genuine (TM) New York Dirt that clung to them despite vigorous scrub-brushing every day and night should tell you how awful they were. I generally dislike wearing gloves to wheel but I've never wished I'd brought my gardening gloves on holiday so much!