Lost & Found; Known & Unknown

I'm not generally a careless person, but I've lost my purse three times in the last seven months.

It's a small, black zippered purse - some might call it a change purse - just big enough for all the plastic cards one carries these days and a bit of "real" money. In other words, enough important stuff that losing it causes me to panic and run around wildly looking at the ground and thinking about how stupid I am and how I might be losing my mind and how if I find it (my purse, not my mind) I will always always always carry it inside a larger purse that shall be zipped up securely while I walk to and fro in my daily trips to the car, to work, to the grocery store, etc., etc.

The problem is that I pinched a nerve in my purse-carrying shoulder a decade back, and although I take my large purse to the store, I don't take it IN the store. And my current so-called large purse was bought before I started carrying my camera everywhere, so it's kind of full, and my little purse often is the last thing crammed in there. You can see the potential for trouble from a mile away, can't you?

The first time I lost my dear little purse was in a department store forty minutes from home. I was buying a lot of stuff which I was holding in my arms because I started out looking for one thing and ended up with a dozen things and no cart to put them in, and somewhere in the process my little purse dropped out of my grasp, which I didn't notice because I was clutching a pack of socks and it felt the same. An honest employee turned it in within fifteen minutes and I thanked everyone there plus my lucky stars that I wasn't facing an evening of calls to report lost cards of every description. What relief! I promised myself I'd be extra careful in future.

The second time my little friend and I parted company, it eventually turned up under the front passenger seat of my car, where it had landed after I chucked it into my large purse and it bounced out. This unnerved me even more than the first time, and I decided I'd be extra-extra careful in future.

This week I lost my %&*# purse again, and once again found it in the car, right beside the driver's seat, where it had fallen as I was getting in. Between the losing and the finding I drove around town, back to work, up and down the stairs twice, and back home, where I finally calmed down enough to see the little scallywag perched on the bottom edge of the door frame where it had sat laughing at me, I'm sure, while I got in and out, in and out, in and out of the car.

So I made a different vow. Because how many times can one lose one's lifeline to modern banking, driving, health care, health insurance, and store discounts before one does something more drastic (and effective) than making pinky-swear promises to oneself that one clearly cannot keep?

The answer, if you've dozed off and lost track, is three times, if you're me.

I drove straight to a store which sells large purses to buy a new one, one that is big enough to hold my little purse and my camera and a few other odds and ends comfortably, so that my little purse will not always be perched precariously on top of everything else, ready to jump out at the slightest jiggle or mischievous purse-notion.

(Full disclosure: I didn't end up buying a new large purse because none of them met my somewhat conflicting criteria of being large but light. Instead, I'm digging an old purse out of the closet tonight. It may be shabby but at least my precious plastic will be safe. Side note: what has the world come to that we value plastic rectangles so highly??)

And an update on my mom: she seems to be pretty much back to where she was before she fell ill. But in the course of prolonged visits with her while she was recovering, I have discovered that her pre-illness mental processing may not have been as robust as I thought. So I am wrestling with the known and the unknown in that regard.

But you know what? My mother hasn't once lost her purse. Food for thought, eh?

This is how happy I've been, going along dum-de-dum, not thinking too much about age and senility sneaking up on me (my own or my mom's) just like that cat in the back is sneaking up on the dog; a cat who, incidentally, looks exactly like our kitty #3, the one that bites at the least provocation. I wonder if she was a cat model in her life before us?? In any case, that dog and I are probably in for a big ol' butt-kicking in the not too distant future.

Thanks for reading! I hope your weekend gives your butt a nice soft cushy place to land, and not the butt-kicking referred to above :)


I would give credit for the photo but I can't remember where I found it. If it belongs to you and you want me to remove it, I will gladly do so, with apologies.