Like most everyone else, I am longing for spring. That’s a more diplomatic way of saying we’ve all been about ready to take someone’s head off –run around screaming—or at the very least drive straight south without looking back–if the sun doesn’t warm things up pretty soon. But, hallelujah, we’ve just about made it!
The boots are being stashed and the spring duds are making their way out of storage—not a moment too soon.
Ladies’ accessories like purses are in immediate need of attention – black just won’t do when the clocks “spring forward” and the birds are singing. I remember the cool purse I had in high school – at that time a trendy leather satchel that nowadays would appear to be some sort of tack for horses, or a saddlebag. This very cool purse, which most all the girls owned at least one version of, had little tooled flowers all around the edges, painted in with pretty pastels. I can still smell the leather and wonder where that now-retro 70’s era archetype ended up? It would make a great mid-life crisis pacifier.
There has been an explosion of purse styles since the days of my youth. Where once we debated whether to stash the Bonne Belle watermelon lip gloss in our pocket, backpack, or the tooled leather purse, today our young girls (and their mothers and grandmothers) covet Coach, Dooney & Bourke, and Vera Bradley, along with 9 West, Liz Claiborne, sparkly “Betsy” purses and probably hundreds of others of which I am blissfully ignorant.
One’s choice of pocketbook / handbag / purse–along with the contents– is something of a distillation of one’s personality. The gal who carries a little stream-lined number containing only money and a cell phone is a far cry from the owner of a giant satchel loaded with a complete supply of makeup and a day’s worth of luggage along with a novel-in-progress and a water bottle. Peeking inside some of these overstuffed, inanimate companions is akin to jumping down Alice in Wonderland’s rabbit hole…or even worse, being caught in an over-sized Venus fly trap…it’s a whole parallel universe in some of them.
I am currently partial to a spiffy royal blue waterproof bag that looks stylish but is really utilitarian, which just may be reflective of some of my personality traits. Somebody needs to do a Psychology Thesis on the correlation between personality and purse style selection.
All of this brings me to another very important “satchel” – the tool bag. The end of winter means it’s time for fixing things up and getting ready for spring! I happen to own my very own tool bag (brilliant idea borrowed from Susan, a much more organized wife and mom than I) which I keep INSIDE the house, as opposed to the garage where my husband’s tools reside.
For years, whenever I wanted to hammer something, I went to the cold garage, covertly retrieved a hammer from the even colder tool box, and went about my business.
Since being emancipated by tool bag ownership, I have embarked on all sorts of interesting low-level projects, not the least of which is picture hanging. I have a stud-finder, which I rarely use, a measuring tape, and plenty of nails to go with my very own hammer. I have found that the best way to figure out where to hang a picture is to look at the wall, decide on a place, and whack in a nail with abandon. It works almost every time, except about 50% of the time, when I pull the nail out and move it over an inch and a half. Perfect.
All is well UNLESS my husband, or any man, is around. They hear a nail being hammered and run in to see what you are ruining. It’s annoying. I have never yet checked for studs, used those anchor things or carefully measured six times just to hang ONE picture. And not one of the pictures I have hung has ever fallen off, even through two mild earthquakes that have hit the area in the last decade.
In fact, I would bet that if all that were really necessary, then at least two-thirds of all pictures hung in our area’s homes would have crashed to the floor during at least one of the quakes, but they did not.
This year, with spring finally upon us, the next logical step is for Coach and Vera Bradley to go ahead and start a line of — tool bags, of course. Aren’t purses just glorified tool bags anyway? I kind of want one in leather, with little flowers all around.
By Cheryl Hodges [email protected]