I spend time on the oddest things. For example, I wanted to make the title of this post both true and punny, so I thought about it for a while, then dumped out my Saddle Purse on the dining table. Voila! “Table O’ Contents.” I think readers like discovering tiny, clever details in what they read, and the writer has to put them there to be discovered. It takes more work than you can imagine.
Cleaning out my first and last purse (I hope) for the very first time was eye-opening. I won’t explain the entire haul that had grown inside the saddle. You can tell what most things are, and you know their uses. But I do want to highlight a few items.
The cowboy hat belongs to Skitter, although I have worn it a couple of times. She wore it last week to Delta when we didn’t find Mom. Once she realized Mom had busted out for the day, and she wouldn’t be seeing Grandma, Skitter got pouty and hung her head so low her hat kept slipping off. Into the purse, I put it. The hat is perched on my Triple Combination (Mormon scriptures, for you heathens out there). I had put the book into my purse Sunday before I went to church with Grace Anne, and I hadn’t taken it out yet. The lens on top of my Triple Combo is my monocle. Yup, it’s the monocle I’ve been looking for throughout the last few weeks. I’ve missed it.
The red booklet is just what it says it is: a copy of The Constitution. It’s always a fine read when you’re waiting somewhere in a long line. This copy is usually in the center console of my car, so I’ll return it to its spot. I don’t know how it got in my Saddle Purse.
In fact, as a fledgling carrier of a purse, I can attest to the fact that it’s a mystery how most of the things I found in my purse today got there. It’s as if purses magically become the way stations on the journey to where items really belong. And sometimes, like with the tobacco pipe you see here, things get into purses because they don’t have a place to be. I have no Pipe Room, you know. The reason I have a pipe is no more complicated than the fact that sometimes what you’re wearing just needs a prop pipe. I suppose what I really need to do is create a Prop Room, but we don’t want a bigger house. More importantly, I ain’t movin’ again.
Total # of notebooks found in the purse: 6. Total # of pens/pencils, including 1 CTR pencil: 10. Clip for a thick stack of papers: 1 gigantic pink one, which Suzanne brought me from a work trip in Augusta, GA. The red Snoopy/Christmas tree bow tie is a spare, one of my “stunt” ties. It’s one I carry “just in case.” Also, I’ve been carrying around my spiffy watch to help me remember to take it to the jeweler for repair. The spiffy watch hasn’t yet helped me remember to take it to the jeweler for repair, as you can see.
The orange and black tube at bottom, center in the photo is my generic EpiPen injector, filled with epinephrine to counteract my allergic reactions to bee stings. I carry it with me at all times. The SMARTIES are the size of quarters!
The dial-looking thing above the EpiPen is a pack of spare batteries for my hearing aid, which my ear doc insists I call a hearing “device.” Just above the CUTTER spray, you can see one of my headlamps. I honestly don’t remember exactly when I needed a headlamp in my purse, but I can pretty much guarantee it had to do with being able to read and/or write in the dark without bothering anyone.
Oddly, one of the material objects it would be difficult for me to be without is the bright orange matchbook-looking thing to the right of The Constitution. It is designed to be like a matchbook, but instead of matches, it contains Post-it notes. It makes me laugh every time I see it. It never gets old to me.
But do you “see” what I didn’t find in my Saddle Purse? My wallet! I had to go upstairs and search for it. I finally found it in the back pocket of a pair of my shorts, in the dirty clothes. I try to keep my wallet in The Saddle Purse, but I have decades of a wallet-in-back-pocket habit to overcome. Besides, before this morning’s evacuation of the purse, my poor thin wallet couldn’t have fit into anyway.
BTW Feel free to ask about any of the items that cluttered my Saddle Purse. The last snapshot is the end result of its first bigly overhaul.