Huff and Puff

So, when I was a teenager, my mom bought an inflatable travel pillow, to go along with her fabulous airplane blinders, and I spent many hours next to her on airplanes being mortally embarrassed about how dorky she looked. It was many years later that I finally threw my own concerns about dorkiness out the window and broke down and bought my own travel pillow. I did it because I flew somewhere with my mom and she lent me her pillow during the flight and that was it, I was converted. I had to have one. Most of the bad things about trying to sleep on airplanes were solved by this simple yet goofy item. Issues like having your neck loll around so that you drool on your own shoulder - or the shoulder of your seat mate are solved, simply inflate, place behind head and relax. There many different variations on the travel pillow, buckwheat filled, soft squishy ones, and inflatables. My mother now has a soft squishy one by a company called Fom, but it takes up some space, so she carries it in a special bag separate from her carry-on. The buckwheat and flax seed pillows present a similar problem. I opted for inflatable to save space in the carry on but then you get to spend a couple of minutes huffing and puffing into it to blow it up. You'll forget about that once you fall asleep though! Travel pillows are available from many different stores, Brookstone carries a pretty good selection, you can also find them at Flight 001, and in the Muji section at the Moma Store. So blow up and rest easy!