Six Years

I have carried the same black Coach bag for six years. I bought it at a 6:30am sale at Parisian in November, 1999, the morning I judged for the district drama competition. I remember that because I was SO excited about my purse bargain when I got there to judge, and I was showing off my new purse to people who really did. not. care.

I did not intend to buy a purse that day, because I had another one that I had been using for about 4 years. But that one was brown, and I had gotten so I wasn’t wearing as much brown anymore. A black one made more sense.

And Coach bags almost NEVER go on sale. This black one was on sale… 40 or 50% or something equally unheard of, so I pounced.

“Think of all the money I saved!” wasn’t exactly an argument Jerry appreciated, so I just vowed to use that purse for a long time.

Here it is, six years later, and I’ve been using the same black purse every day since. Even in summer, even though I know it’s not correct to use a black purse in the summertime. Yup, I’m a rebel.

Lately, I’ve noticed that I’m only functioning out of the top third of it, and as a result it gets filled up with randomness that sinks to the abyss at the bottom, and thus gets VERY heavy. Everyone makes comments about the weight of my purse when they pick it up.

It was time for a change.

Parisian is having another sale (tomorrow they’re even having another 6:30am one… Trying to decide if I’ll go without kids in the morning), so I took Helen and Alice and we went shopping.

Shopping with me is rare for them –I do not particularly enjoy shopping because I’m an impulse buyer, so I try to stay out of stores as much as I can. But today I braved it, because we were going to try to find a white shirt for their Daddy, since his white button down has gone missing and he really needs one. Alice was in a stroller, and Helen had to be touching the stroller (my rule), and the girls were ANGELS. I was so pleased with them. It was even lunchtime — a traditional time for both of them to be fussy and obnoxious, but they were perfect.

We did not find a white shirt for Daddy. All the ones that we saw either had designs woven into the fabric (bleah), were too dressy, had a HUGE Polo logo on the chest, or cost over $75. I’ll just order a replacement non-descript white shirt from Eddie Bauer for $24.50, which is all he wants, anyway. It is not necessary to be a walking advertisement for Ralph Lauren, thanks.

Then, with Helen’s help (she picked them out), I got two new purses today. They’re about the same size, which is HALF the size of the black one that they’ll be replacing.

One is a red faux croc leather by Fossil, and the other is a lime green soft leather by The Sak. I got 40% off on one of them, and 55% off on the other one. Not too shabby! Looked briefly at Coach bags, but Coach isn’t really making leather purses right now, and I buy my purses to last a long time (obviously), so non-leather ain’t it for me.

Here’s the funniest part. I actually have STYLISH purses now. Weird. I haven’t had a stylish purse since my Liz Claiborne purses in middle school.

I moved into the red purse in the parking lot while I was waiting to be able to pull out of our parking space. Everything that I use actually FITS. Huh. And all this time I’ve been carrying around the Black Hole.

The BEST part? I don’t actually have to REMOVE the wallet to get to the money. I can get to cash/cards without having to take the entire wallet out of the purse, which is totally different from the black one (because the black one was too deep for how I used it). This will be a vast improvement. You women readers will totally understand why this is a good thing.

Whee! Enjoying the little things…