tomorrow will be in the 70s and patriots' day is next week. for all my wishful thinking that spring has sprung come evacuation day (st. patrick's to those not in massachusetts or our sacrificed annex of maine) the thermometer doesn't begin to agree til about now. today was a beauty too -- fluffy postcard clouds, crews on the charles and only the faintest wisp of a breeze, even in the wind tunnel of copley square.
boots and scarves go in boxes and we start peeling back and going lighter. men don't get this, but it means different shoes and bags. (flip-flops do not count. they are pool wear, ok? not shoes.) my trusty coach wool satchel needs to take a nap. however, last fall i threw away the all-purpose summer sack because it was frayed and beat to hell. i threw it out to prevent using it again this year in its disrepair. i threw it out assuming 6-1/2 months later i could easily afford to replace it.
anybody paying attention knows i'm fretting over the cost of butter, so no new mortgage purse is in the budget.
marshall's is next to one of my restaurants. i know, i know. it's ghetto. but sometimes i've scored decently there. (although never once on a purse... hmmph -- did i remember that earlier today?) they had LOTS of bags, all arranged by color. sheesh, looks like brights are the new black. so many screaming yellow patent leather bags -- what the hell is the gorton's fishermen fleet wearing in gloucester? like a discerning bee who only likes the pollen from the rarest of orchids, i drifted over to a camel-colored vision. ack. $285. at MARSHALL'S.
ok. exhale. rethink. scope some more. in the cross-hairs -- $195. wtf? a couple more lookies and i was out the revolving door. my eyes were like the scope on a smart bomb. through the sea of off-kilter colors and just too much shoddy detailing, every bag that called me was supple italian leather, with only the subtlest of adornments. spare me the fringe and the damn faux bling. yuk. if miuccia prada puts buckles on a bag, by the time it filters down to the rack dreck at marshall's it's bad so many ways there ought to be a law. gaah.
if i was really a masochist, i could have tormented myself looking at the michael kors shoes that had just arrived. but i had only snuck away for a moment and my desire to remain employed outweighed my desire to self-flagellate over buttery leather soles.
maybe i'll just carry to-go bags all summer. yeah. that's it.
my mother and grandmother could shop from open to close. while they both enjoyed finding a steal, it was the hunt for the italian leathers, the irish wools, the 3-ply cashmeres that was the point. they taught me to look inside the garment, at the finishing you couldn't see, to determine how well the piece was built, affecting both its fit and how long it would last. my grandmother wasn't so long away from hand-me-downs and boiled potatoes for dinner to waste money on shoddy clothes.
so things like those bags sing to me in a store. even when moths fly out of my wallet cuz they are going hungry in there. i'm stuck not wanting to waste even a small amount of money on a piece of crap that i'll hate and not being able to afford anything nice. grr.
if only women left purses all about public places like they do umbrellas. unfortunately, tod's bags do NOT belong to the universe like parapluie.
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