the non blogworthy new old purse

Though my boyfriend is into food, he's not into chick flicks, and, as I worked on a neighborhood newsletter most of Sunday, and into Monday, my Monday afternoon was a lot like other people's Sundays, so I went to see Julia & Julie on a whim on Monday when most normal people are working if that makes any sense.

"What was it about?" he asked me in the car yesterday when he came to pick me up at a park about a mile away from an el stop that is five or so el stops past my normal el stop. I had been having one of those days where you want to escape somewhere, or scream, but not really having the strength to do either of those things after an appointment downtown yesterday morning I found myself happily reading a fiction book on the train home, and deciding that one of the things I miss about the commute to a job is reading on the train, I just stayed on the train.

At Irving Park I walked about a mile to a park that I used to jog through about five years ago. It was a park I knew well, because I went there almost every day when I lived in the area. The lifeguard at the Portage Park pool said that I couldn't get in without a bathing suit, even though I was just planning on sitting on a chair, and reading. I ended up on my back on the cement bleachers in front of a deserted softball field. Cement benches are great for the lower back, fyi, and I was holding the book up high with my right arm to block out the sun because I lost my sunglasses. Again. I stayed that way until I ached, and then transferred to the grass, and then my boyfriend called, and all of this was before noon. He said coming to retrieve me reminded him of having a senile grandparent that gets lost, but that it was okay.

Oh yeah, what's it about. Well, I told him that it's about a woman that blogs, and assigns herself a task, to cook a recipe each day from Julia Child's cookbook. She has to have a theme, a purpose to her blog, because, like me, she never finishes anything, either, with the exception of course that Julie Powell did finish the blog, and then it got turned into a book, followed by a movie. The impetus was that she was going to hit 30, and had a lot of uber successful friends, and was stuck in a dead-end job having nothing to do with writing. She also felt like she needed to be published to call herself a writer, which is a feeling I know all to well, though technically I have been published before, but that was a long time ago, and no longer counts.


Anyhow, I guess what I tried to tell him was that the movie was interesting, and inspiring, and the obsessiveness Powell displayed toward blogging, and writing hit a bit too close to home. I then mentioned that my new old purse, a birthday gift from my brother, sister-in-law, and niece should be coming any day now. Last year my mother got me a Blue Q purse from a trade show for my birthday, and because unlike most women I am too lazy to have more than one purse--- it's the transferring of stuff from purse to purse when I lose stuff, better to never transfer-- I wore out my no longer shiny butterfly purse. It is so tattered now that it's an embarrassment, yet I've been too lazy to change to a new purse.

Now, I have a new purse, and it looks just like the old purse did when it was new.

I told him that maybe I'd post a blog with photos of the old purse, and the new purse. A virtual record of my love for the purse. You batter, and use, and wear out the ones- and things- you love most, no? In an ideal world, you don't. In the real world, sometimes you do.

So here they are... old battered purse, and new shiny purse, both bearing butterflies, both from Blue Q.

"Is it blogworthy?" he had asked me in reference to the two purses. "No," I had replied. "It isn't, but I'll probably do it anyway."