The Junk Drawer

The good thing about carrying a purse is that I have everything I need in a day whenever I need it. The bad thing is that I have everything I need in a day whenever I need it. It’s freaking heavy.

Granted, I’m not one of those suitcase purse kinds of women. That’s just crazy. Nor am I like the Sherpa woman I work with who walks into the office a few times a week carrying no less than four kinds of bundles: her laptop case, her regular purse, her knitting materials bag and usually some books. She’s a librarian Sherpa, so I can make a concession for the books.

That’s not me. I need exactly one bag and I’m thoroughly annoyed if I have to grab a bigger sack to put the purse and other things in. I want to be a minimalist, like my husband, who gets to walk around earth carrying a five ounce wallet.

Anyway, I’ve got a bag big enough to hold my wallet, a digital camera, my sunglasses case and about a thousand envelopes with what I think are important papers in them, but never find the time to actually check. At least they’re all rubber-banded together so that I look some measure less disorganized when I go hunting for something.

Even though I don’t think I have too many items in my purse, the weight of it all means that everything is laying at the bottom of it and I still need to dig around. Since I have nothing unnecessary in my purse, this annoys me to no end.

Tonight when I went to the vet’s to pick up medicine for one of my cats, I got in line behind a woman who had her purse slung over her shoulder and in that purse sat a dog.

Cute little thing. Really little. About the size of the turkey sandwich I had for lunch today.

The woman was trying to check out, pay her bill and be on her way. But she just could not get to her wallet. Dig, dig, dig. Sigh, sigh, sigh.

She says “I don’t know why I can never get at anything in here!”

I’ll tell you why.

Because there’s a dog in your purse.

So tell me, ladies, do you hate your purse? Love your purse? Do you wish you could walk around with only a wallet? Do you wish you could carry a teeny-tiny dog around in it, ignoring the snickers of people like me who think that’s hysterical?

Yesterday my husband and I attended a birthday party for my brother-in-law. I was disappointed to find out from other guests that I missed the part of the show where my husband tried to walk through a patio door without first making sure it was, like, open. Smooth move, Dave.

Though he’s not so great with walking through glass, he does have a knack for screen doors.

The year: 1992

The place: Our townhouse

The event: Escaped cat

One morning before work, I had enough time to let one of our cats out into the backyard, which overlooked a wooded area and a small creek. I put Calvin in his harness and tied the leash to a fence.

From the breakfast nook I could keep an eye on him, but when I had my back turned for a split second, he managed to wriggle his way out of the harness and escape to God knows where.

Not prone to too much panic, as this had happened before, I grabbed a can of cat food and went outside to open it up in the hopes that Calvin would hear a familiar yummy sound and come running back from wherever he ventured off.

He didn’t.

I began calling his name, pleading more desperately with each shout.

Still nothing.

I ran inside for a jingle bell toy he liked and returned outside to ring it in an annoyed, I-mean-business kind of way.

Time ticked with no response.

Looking over the bank, down to the creek, I saw something orange and white moving about the brush. It’s him! Good that I found him, bad to see how inaccessible he was. The hill dropped at a 45 degree angle.

Now I panicked.

So what’s a girl to do? I ran back to the house and yelled through the screen door “Dave!!! Calvin’s in the woods!!! I can’t get him!!!”

A formerly-sleeping Dave bolted out of bed, stumbled downstairs and shot through the door to begin search and rescue.

And by “through the door,” I mean through the door.

Like a gorilla in the mist, my beast of a husband took out the entire screen door, right off the tracks.

Huh. That’s sort of unfortunate.

Without skipping a beat, he handed me the door, said simply “Here. Hold this,” and went off to retrieve Calvin.

And so there I stood, regretting having turned a peaceful morning into a three-ring circus, holding an ineffective jingle bell toy and a giant, slightly-bent patio door that would never again close properly.

Awesome.

We usually consider people who live on the edge as the types who enjoy thrill-seeking adventures such as skydiving, rock climbing or race car driving.

Tonight I met a guy who could beat them all.

He was going to buy a tub of sour cream.

Let me ‘splain.

I followed him to the courtesy counter at my grocery store. He had the sour cream in hand and I figured he’d be in and out of the line in no time at all. Spotting another container of sour cream peeking out of a bag on the counter, I realized he was there to make an exchange.

He told the cashier “I looked and looked and could only find this one.”

“Let me see,” said the cashier.

“But it’s just like all the others. They’re all expired,” the man reported. “This one is the most recent. June 21st.”

The cashier, not knowing exactly what to do about the exchange, stood there for a moment and said nothing.

I figured the next move she’d make is to give the guy his money back because he couldn’t find a tub that still had some time left on the clock.

But no.

He said “It’s only four days past expiration. If I smell it, I can tell if it’s still good yet.“

No, buddy. If you smell it and deem it safe, you may just find yourself in the ER a little later on.

Either because you ate it or because the wife who probably sent you back to the store to get a new one is going to kick you in the spleen for bringing home only a slightly less hazardous one.

Dude. Livin’ on the edge doesn’t always end well.

And that statement is: We have too many blankets.

Ay-carumba! They’re just the ones in the living room. There are at least eight more upstairs.

Yet each one of these is here for a reason.

From top to bottom:

#1 traveled downstairs one day and got stuck there. I believe it got washed and never made it back up. You know, because it’s so hard to carry a blanket up fourteen steps. My back!

#2 is for Shadow, our cat who likes to sleep on the red chair’s ottoman.

#3 is for Lucky, our cat who likes to sleep on the red chair.

#4 is for me to cover my legs at the kitchen table where an A/C vent blows arctic air right on me.

#5 also came down for a washing and never made it back upstairs. Oh, so heavy!

#6 is for covering a chair you can’t see. Another spot where Lucky likes to nap.

#7 is for me to nap with. Used in conjunction with #4 because one blanket is not enough for napping, so says me, the Napping Queen.

Can anyone beat this? Extra points of you own a Snuggie. Subtract points if you have one for your dog.

When my husband Dave and I were first dating, we’d hit the dance clubs every other weekend.

During one such outing, we went to popular nightclub that had a big, hulking guy standing outside the doors to take the cover charge and make sure you were of age to get in.

Hulking guy took the money from Dave and then stared at me for an uncomfortably long time. Of course, I thought it was because of my stop-traffic hotness.

It wasn’t.

He spoke.

I remember you.

Oh, yeah?

Fancy Feast and pot pies.

What?

Fancy Feast. You used to come into Weis Markets and buy a ton of Fancy Feast cat food and pot pies.

Dying.

I remember you would buy hardly any food, but would always buy a load of cat food. I thought you had ten cats.

Dying some more and not wanting to give him any response, I grabbed Dave’s arm, nervously smiled at hulking guy and slipped inside.

Dude. You’re a tool.

Thanks for setting up my date night in the most awkward way possible, (though Dave never asked about it, the sweetheart he is.)

It was better left unsaid that when I moved out on my own, I had hardly any money to speak of. Times were very lean. But I had my own apartment and a cat named Baby who thought I was most righteous.

A cat for whom I didn’t mind feeding the very best stinky goodness money could buy. Oh, yeah. And I survived those first years on chicken pot pies, 3 for $1.00. Mere pennies more expensive than the cat food.

Sure, I was just scraping by, but I didn’t mind.

What I did mind was a stupid former grocery store clerk knowing it and remembering it out loud.

So I guess the lesson here is that when you think your grocery store cashier is making judgements about you by the things you buy, and you tell yourself “Nah, they wouldn’t,” think again. They’re taking notes.