Tag: purse

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Awesome Drew Humor Memoir Nonfiction Writing

Lost and Found

Inspired by a conversation at work today, I thought I would tell you 3 stories of things lost and found.

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1. A Great Time at Great America

I was at Great America with some friends – I think this was in high school or maybe right afterwards. We were walking through the park when we saw a cell phone behind a chain link fence, under a roller coaster. We somehow fished it out, and I really wanted to be a hero, so I called “Mom” in the phone and explained the situation. The mom asked me to take the phone to the information booth at the front of the park, and she would call her son’s friend and tell him where to pick it up.

That wasn’t really enough to call myself a hero, so I didn’t take it to the info booth right away. And before we’d gotten around to it, the phone was ringing and I answered it. It was the kid calling from his friend’s phone, and he was happy that I’d found it, and we all agreed to meet up at the Drop Zone. We gave him the phone back and everyone was happy. What a great day! (In retrospect, yeah, the safe and appropriate thing to do would have been to take the phone to the information booth. But whatever, it all worked out.)

2. Milka: Does a Body Good

While in college at Davis, I was walking across campus when I spotted a wallet on the ground. It had very little info inside, but there was a student ID. When I got back to my room, I used the ID to look up the student’s Davis email address, and I sent her a message. She called me, very happy, and asked if I could possibly drop off her wallet the next day. It was a Friday, and I had no classes, but I said yes. Then she asked if I could drop it off before 10am, because she was leaving for a weekend in Tahoe with her friends. Ten sounded very early (I’m rolling my eyes at myself right now) but I said yes again, and she told me where her office was located.

She was a grad student in the German and Russian department, and I found her pretty easily. She was ecstatic, and offered me twenty bucks. I turned it down. Then she said, “Well, how about some chocolate? I bring this back from Germany, you can’t get it here,” and she gave me a Milka bar. It was plum and cinnamon, except it wasn’t even in English. It was delicious, and Drew and I have looked all over, and never found that flavor again. We still talk about “the best Milka bar.”

3. The Ungrateful Salad Eater

In New York, I worked as a cashier at a little lunch place that served primarily salads and sandwiches. One day, one of the guys who worked there found a purse that someone had left upstairs. I looked through the bag and found a paystub, and called the company and asked for the woman whose name was on it. When I told her that I had her purse, she responded very calmly. “Oh, okay.” Then I told her just to come pick it up whenever.

I noticed, when looking for her ID, that there were bunches of bills stuffed all over the place – it was super messy but there seemed to be a lot of money just haphazardly shoved in there. But I didn’t take any of it. Because morals. And then finally – FINALLY – this woman showed up, looking really bored, and just took the purse and kind of wandered away. No thank you. No gratitude. No relief. No offer of “reward.” And I sort of regretted not taking at least ten bucks for my trouble.

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So there you have it.  Two stories have happy endings; the third is a lesson in doing the right thing even when no one cares what you do.

Categories
Being a girl Celebrities Humor Memoir Nonfiction

What’s In My Purse?

Apparently, “what’s in my purse?” is a thing. I mean, like, a YouTube/tumblr/Pinterest kind of thing. So last night I was cleaning out my purse and I thought, Hey, why not?

purse2
1. Star stickers! I just carry these around even though I never. ever. use. them. (I should figure out a way to use them.)

2. Sports Authority loyalty cards. I bought 2 baseball pitch counters there for work, accidentally signed up for an account, and then got promo emails from them practically every day for a month. I finally unsubscribed and last night, I finally finally threw out these cards.

3. Placecards (for Drew, B, and me) from Jocelyn and Kevin’s wedding!

4. Assorted feminine hygiene products. I can 100% promise you that I will eventually pull out one of these, when I’m looking for a pen, in front of the Artistic Director or something.

5. 1 stack of post-its; 1 rubber band.

6. 1 tin of Altoids smalls (cinnamon); 1 cinnamon-caramel Worthers (sugar free) (I ate it this afternoon)

7. 1 fancy ladies’ hook so I can hang my purse from the table and not have to set it on a bar floor. Might come in handy if I ever went to a bar. (Fun fact: I was given this for Christmas in 2009, in my first round of working at TW.)

8. 3 button batteries from a Baby Einstein Maritime Octopus. The octopus stopped playing music, so I ripped out the seams to get to the music box, in the hopes that if I replace the batteries it will work again. Why wouldn’t they make it easy to get to? (PS. The batteries were 3 for $1.17 on Amazon.)

9. Assorted Sharpies and other pens. (The ones I will be going for when I humiliate myself in front of senior members of my company.)

10. Headphones! I suddenly can’t live without these, from listening to my audiobook on my commute, to talking on the phone hands free, to music at the gym.

11. My planner, still opened to Memorial Day weekend. For some reason I just don’t find myself as dependent on it anymore.
11a. Birthday card from JA!

12. Giant wad of keys.

13. Annex to giant wad of keys (Drew’s grandma’s house keys)

14. Baby powder for those days when I think my hair is “clean enough” but I’m terribly wrong and my bangs show it.

Not pictured: pile of old paycheck stubs; pile of trash; 2 letters marked “return to sender,” 1/2 of a…crayon? How on earth would that get in there?

…I’m guessing this whole “What’s in my purse?” thing is more interesting when Beyoncé or Kate Middleton or someone does it.

Categories
Awesome Baby Being a girl Fashion Humor Memoir Nonfiction Sentiment Travel

Ode to a purple purse

Carrying a diaper bag suits me.

I’ve always been the kind of person to have too much stuff on me. Occasionally it pays off – like when I’m stuck in line somewhere  and need something to read, or when someone says, “Does anyone have contact solution?” or when someone needs to borrow a pen and I can offer them a choice between 7 different pens and 1 mechanical pencil.

(I like mechanical pencils way more than regular pencils: you don’t have to sharpen them and I just feel like they write really nicely. One of my favorite things in high school used to be sitting down to do math homework on a nice piece of fresh graph paper with a nice 0.7 mechanical pencil…NOT a 0.5!)

Often, of course, I’m just the person with a way-too-full purse, and people with good intentions will tell me that it’s too heavy and that it’s bad for me or something. I remember, right when we moved back to California in 2009, I finally decided to stop carrying around a messenger bag, and I went to Macy’s and bought my purse, the same one I’ve carried since then. It was purple and hobo style, not super huge, but big enough to fit a book and my planner and a granola bar and a bunch of papers I don’t need and of course, up to 10 writing implements.

I carried that purse for over 3 years, probably never matching it to my “outfits,” and I loved it no matter how worn out it got and how dirty it was. But then at church on Christmas Eve, I tried to zip it shut and I guess it was just too full, and the zipper broke clean off. A couple days after Christmas, I remembered about the zipper busting, and so I sat down, ceremoniously emptied everything out, threw away all the old gum wrappers and receipts, sorted the papers into three piles (“shred,” “do something,” “file”), and then, without further ado, stuffed the purse into our kitchen trash can. Not the most illustrious send-off for an accessory that has served me well, but rest assured, purple Nine West purse, I will never forget you.

So now I’ve busted out my cross-body bag that has the NY Public Library lions on the front. Drew’s mom gave it to me for Christmas in 2008. I love it, and it’s got more room, so now I can have all my regular stuff, plus my Nalgene and even an extra granola bar. But probably my favorite thing about it is, since it’s a cross-body, it doesn’t require extra work to keep it on my shoulder, and it doesn’t fall down my arm when I lean over to pick up the carseat, grocery bags, baby toys, etc. (Women will probably understand what I mean.)

But a diaper bag opens up even more possibilities than just a medium-sized purse. I love having an excuse to take an even bigger bag with me. I love that I can just pack up everything I could possibly need: extra clothes (and they’re so tiny, you can fit so many!), bib(s), diapers, almost empty package of wipes, brand new package of wipes, burp cloths, disposable burp cloths, toys, nursing pads, travel lotion, more toys, extra pacifier, pacifier leash(es), other nursing pads, extra plastic fork (just in case?), large hook (for the stroller push bar to hang your plastic shopping bags on), pacifier wipes, diaper disposal bags (scented in case you have throw away a dirty diaper in your office)… and I might be forgetting something.

All this stuff fits in one regular-sized diaper bag…and means that we’re prepared for almost any occasion. I just love that. I love being prepared. I think that’s one of the things I really liked about stage managing – having a kit full of office supplies. (Well, being prepared, and, I just love office supplies.)

The funny thing is, we don’t really need this stuff that often. We do leave the diaper bag at home, or in the car, and go out without it. I’m sure a day will come when we’ll regret that.

In the meantime, we’ll make sure the diaper bag is well stocked for all contingencies. I’ll continue my quest to fit more and more things in my NY Library lions bag. And maybe one day, when all this baby stuff has calmed down, I’ll get myself a new, ladylike purse. One that would make the ladies of Sex and the City proud. Maybe.