I am really irritated now. Not once, but twice I was nearly finished with a post when it somehow vanished after I ran spell check. I am not in the mood to write the short piece a third time. It is close to one in the morning.

The post began with these sentences, "What is it about midnight? I am staying up later and later to mess with blogs. Sally says she is staying up later too and she doesn't have a blog and she is still working."

I've forgotten the segue into 'piles' of which my house is filled. I used to put my purse on a particular chair when I returned home form work. The chair also held several little Mexican plaid plastic bags for carrying crochet, office files and other random stuff. Martha's cousin Aggie has piles too, but her piles are more picturesque, as you can see.

The piles on the modest built-in desk in my library are a real mess. And three out of four chairs at my kitchen table have significant piles as does the top of the table. In fact, there is little or no room to put anything in this house because all the spaces and places are filled. Heaven help me if I wanted to practice yoga and or work at a table - or even eat at a table at the moment.

I do have my work cut out for me for the forseeable future. I've said it before - it is the only thing that I am drawn to do at the moment. Finally, I am off to bed in preparation for more pile disseminating tomorrow. What a goofy post. It really is time for some sleep. I will try the spell check one more time and see if I can hold on to this post at the same time.

Sally picked these wild blue berries in the morning and later that day, Elita made a berry crisp. The recipe is simple.

Just a cup of flour, a cup of dark brown sugar and one stick of softened butter all crumbed together in a bowl. Spread the crumble over the blueberries and bake at 400 degrees for about thirty minutes. You'll know it's done when you smell the berry juices and the crumble looks crisp. Hence, the name.

By the way, it was divine.

I'm ready to spend time with Red Purse. This blog doesn't get a fraction of the attention that I lavish on Rockbridge Times. Perhaps I think of it as a 'shopping blog' and since I am trying to restrain myself from getting into any kind of retail situation, I pay little attention to it. I don't want to write about shopping expeditions and guilty pleasures. I am staying out of stores and find that blogging is now more interesting than Ebay and definitely a less expensive habit to maintain. Write more and spend less - a good motto.



So, Red Purse, let's give you a new identity. Let's talk about older women and all the new stuff in their lives. Baby Boomer women and those slightly older find themselves confronting all sorts of new issues - weird health things, retirement or thoughts about retirement, long term care insurance, terrific grandchildren, frail and aged parents, new career opportunities and amazing for me a 'clear the clutter at last' mentality.

It's a Friday night and there is an absolutely torrential rain going on outside. Lots of lightening and thunder. An empty glass of wine is beside me and I am relishing the thought of the few quiet hours ahead.

Red Purse, you're on.

Can it be? Eighteen months since I've posted on Red Purse? Has Rockbridge Times just taken over? Or do I not write because my last post was about shopping and as often shop surreptiously, perhaps there should be no written record of my motivations. Perhaps? You see, editing or 'choosing' one from among many is my real passion whether making a collage or looking at a department of handbags. I like nothing better than finding the best purse in the department (criteria to be determined at the very moment the best bag is sighted), the most clever skirt, the item so tasteless that it's-over-the-top wonderful.

I've been thinking very hard about what prompts the decision to buy. I begun to notice when that moment appears and when I know I will buy. I am beginning to learn what leads me to that moment. It has something to do with the 'choosing' of an item with a strong visual relationship to something already owned. "Why, this will look terrifc with that little chartruese butter dish from the Wimberly trade day. Or it is simplyi so spectacular in some odd way that I'd best find a visual relationship between it and another 'something.'

Last September, I walked away from a pottery exhibition empty handed after looking at a charming coppery glazed water pitcher. We were driving down the dusty road when I thought about how beautiful two matching pitchers would look on a dining table, each filled with peach and buttery pink roses. I was smitten by that image - that is called the point of sale. We stopped the car, turned around on the dusty road and I bought not the one pitcher that I'd admired, but both pitchers. I've not filled them yet with several dozen roses, but the thought is there.
What's your point of sale, your moment of decision?
I'll tell you something else. After my acupuncture appointments, the traffic eastward atthat late time of day is too snarled to attempt and so I succumb more often than not to the charms of the mall at 9700 Harwin Drive - it is a veritable palace of knock-off handbags and inexpensive, no, very cheap jewelry.
Thousands of necklaces, a paradise if you like to edit these thousands of necklaces. I am right at home here - pleasantly engaged, the minutes passing with both speed and in blissful slow motion as in my mind I match beads with yarns I have at home and drop the favored necklaces into a plastic basket. It is lovely to see how disparate things come together just because you've had the eye to see the possibilitiy that they are stronger together than left to themselves. And so my crochet neckpieces are paired with Harwin's best. Hansen+Harwin.

So off to bed. Big weekend - Creative Capital is in town at Diverse Works. My expectations are high. And they do deliver. What a joy. Good night.