The purse

This is my purse. It’s just the right size for all I need, but also a little (OK a lot) heavier than it should be. Why? Because, everything under the sun ends up in here. Admittedly, I carry a lot of stuff with me to get through the day to day of life, including (aside from the obvious wallet, keys, phone and small cosmetic bag) a full water bottle, a notebook for capturing spontaneous thoughts, often a book, plus other random life savers. Unfortunately, my kids have learned that mom pretty much always has her purse with her, so it’s like a portable temporary storage facility when the kids don’t want to hold something. Despite the fact that my standard answer when the kids ask, “Mom, can you hold this?” is always NO, somehow mysterious objects belonging to the offspring of my womb find their way inside my black Coach. I did a partial cleanse the other day – not the liver – the purse.

I found: a bouncy ball, two flower clips, a half eaten lollipop, 9 ponytail bands, Easton’s toothbrush, Rowan’s lip gloss, Afton’s guitar pic, a bag of random batteries courtesy of the boy, and some smashed pretzels in an worn ziplock.

Nice.

But this morning’s treasure was even more delightful. In a rush to get out the door for work, I quickly grabbed my purse to drop in the phone and charger and be on my way. Lucky me discovered the inside purse pocket filled with what appeared to be a fully crushed up, sticky oatmeal raisin granola bar.

Again, courtesy of the boy.

To his credit, he was being so so so good yesterday during our longer than average shopping trip. My mom and I trekked out to the Great Indoors in Chandler (one of my favorite stores) and shopped for a couple of hours. And so to keep him occupied and happy, I had brought some snacks. Harmless I thought. What I didn’t realize was that he’d only taken a bite of the granola bar he’d dug out of my purse, then decided he didn’t want the rest (or the wrapper for that matter). So apparently he concluded that depositing said granola bar sans wrapper into my purse was the only logical thing to do. At least he didn’t litter, right?