Return to Red Purse

This blog of mine was abandoned in 2007. Started Red Purse when a Creative Capital artist friend and I decided to write about our shopping expeditions. I think the initial concept for Red Purse finally got to be too touchy a subject? Did I veer off course and write about other things? Or I was taken up with new blogs that followed along with the jobs and projects in which I became involved? Who knows?
I've taken a new look at Red Purse and have decided that I will write again about shopping - and collecting - and saving. Such activities could easily take over my life. They are guilty pleasures. All need more examination.
Watch for more.

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.

Ok, I went shopping again today. It's Saturday and shopping is relatively mindless after a week of mindful work. Shopping for me is down time. Just looking, editing, selecting, and then, 'to buy or not to buy'. I usually buy. Something. Today, two more purses. This has been a difficult purse season. After a year of use, my bright taxi cab yellow Fossil bag is showing wear. There are newer colors out there, newer textures and much newer shapes.

A month ago I bought a great pair of boots and stuck them under the bed while I pondered whether to keep them. Well, I love them and wore them in Marfa so I'm keeping them. They'll walk me through my public and private lives for as many days as my toes can fold into those Western toes. My new boots are bronze and green metallic and since their purchase, I seem to be color coding everything to these new boots. I only see bronze and green and perennial black. There are few other colors in the spectrum.

And as I said, this has been a difficult purse season. I am not sure I've found 'the one' yet. I began looking for a yellow purse replacement when an unscheduled hour opened up before a haircut appointment. I came home that day with two handbags - a practical leather bag with pressed croc markings - it held everything just like the yellow Fossil bag and was so boring I never took it out of the shopping bag. The second bag was kelly green fake fur with lots of flaps and pockets and covered buttons. I loved it and also knew that it would have had limited use. Tht green fake fur needs chic little black suits or voluminous skirts with layers of shrugs and sweaters. I never took it out of the shopping bag either for fear I would really keep it. I returned both bags and shopped again, leaving the store with a Brahmin green pressed leather bag that i learned is so special that it can be registered on line. Discontinued color so it wasn't full price. Elegant, yet with just a reference to those Mexican handbags with hand tooled roses. Will it go with the boots? More than likely.

And then today, I felt the unquenchable urge to make a quick trip to a store that stocks trendy less expensive bags than the Brahmin. And how easy it was to leave that shop with two handbags - a fashionable and sensible brown metallic mesh bag and a fashionable, frivolous green velvet ruffles bag. I've pulled my boots out from under the bed and confirmed that both bags look really good with the boots.

So my Saturday has been defined by purses. The future of the Brahmin is uncertain. I'll carry green velvet ruffles on my wrist to a dinner this Thursday night. Yes, with the boots and a ruched skirt.

A front came into town today for the first game of the World Series. Astros play at home tonight. Here we are in a sporting event mode again.

Woke very early this a.m. - just after 5:00 - and somehow found 'blogher'. What a present so early in the day. I am ready to sign up for their two day conference in August 2006. Also found Ronnie Bennett's blog on aging and listened to a panel discussion on 'going naked'. Then thought I'd check my own blog - I haven't posted in over a year. And guess what - I posted when the Astros were in the play-offs. And now just this week they've made it to the World Series for the very first time. What is it about my blog that entries are made around sporting event times? And I don't even follow the Astros or any other team and had to be conscious about mentioning their winning game at work so people won't think I am totally out of it. Everyone expresses great interest in the outcome - at least, the people I know and work with in the public sphere. I have to believe they really care about the Astros being a part of the World Series. At the very least, they must care because it brings Houston into the spotlight. And they may like baseball. Or they may like cheering for a home team because it's wrapped up as part of our identity. I am not going to delve further this morning. We've already been in the spotlight as the Good Samaritan for evacuees from Hurricane Katrina. Houston's response was truly wonderful and heartfelt. And we were organized about it. We can thank Mayor White and Judge Eckels for the fine partnership they created to serve this city and the people who poured into it after Katrina. Can you put the Astro's win in the same sort of category. I can't.

So writing the paragraph above, I find myself in a familiar quandary - should I rewrite and tighten before posting? Sleep on the text before publishing? Are such concerns even in the blogging spirit?

So, I see that I've not written since Super Bowl Sunday. Today one of my staff listened to the Astros game on the radio at her desk. They've made the playoffs. Why do I mention sporting events on this blog? Not worth thinking of an answer.

So, the Red Purse is falling short of content. My life is full and my blog does not reflect the day to day to day when so much is happening that there is rarely time to fully prepare for or anticipate the next event or conversation. And there is rarely time to contemplate or assess what has already taken place. I move through my work days like a well trained race horse, saddled up and performing. That's what they pay me me for.

And then I come home and most often instead of expanding my website or adding to my transitional business plan, I peruse ebay and suddenly exhibit great interest in vintage cotton print tablecloths or antique rhinestone brooches, old funky purses or glass negatives and satin eiderdowns from the U.K. Items won are shipped to my office address and my house is more and more filled with objects that I like. And there is hardly a surface on which I can set a bowl for a meal or a space to spread out a newspaper to read. I really do enjoy all of my stuff, every bit of it.

Off to bed now, under an eiderdown, with the air conditioning on - only in Houston.