Amazing moon

When we left dinner tonight, I noticed how cool the moon looked, complete with planet. Once we got home, I grabbed the camera and took a couple shots before I froze enough to come inside.

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Conversation with Lillian

After putting in a Disney DVD and Tinkerbell flies across the screen...

Lily: It's Rella!

Me: No, that's Tinkerbell.

Lily: No, it's Rella.

Me: Uh-uh. It's Tinkerbell.

Lily: It's Tinkerella. (very matter-of-factly)

Close enough, I guess.

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Purses

I'm not sure when it happened, but somewhere along the line, I developed a weird thing about purses. I never carried one in high school, even once I started driving. I just kept my license in a planner, and that was either shoved in my backpack or sitting in the center console. Once I left for college, I broke down and got a small purse since I needed something other than my entire school bag to carry stuff in. That must have been the start of my condition. Now I end up buying a new purse at least every six months, sometimes more often. And my condition only worsened after I had Lillian.

Before Lillian, I was perfectly content to carry the smallest purse known to man as long as it had a shoulder strap and as long as it held my wallet and cell phone. But now I have to carry a small store around with me. Diapers, wipes, fruit snacks, fruit bars, Kleenex, Excedrin, lotion, crayons, toys, etc., etc. (Some of this stuff is also for Erik's benefit. I think men should carry purses, too.) Since the diaper bag the hospital gave us for free was absolutely hideous, I was not going to carry that around. I went to carrying a cute tote, and then a very unstructured hobo, but I couldn't keep things organized and I was always digging through them to find anything. So I found a cute diaper bag made for OCD moms like me with lots of pockets for organizing and it could double as a purse, too. It was huge compared to what I used to carry, but I was ok with it.

Once Lillian stopped requiring diaper changes a million times a day, I decided I could go back to a more sophisticated purse. I'm currently on my fourth try at finding a good option. I originally went back to one of my older purses still sitting in my closet. It worked ok, but I wanted something new. The next try was a little too small to carry all I needed it to, so I went with a larger tote. But then I was back to digging through it to find everything since it was tall and skinny and everything settled at the bottom. So I went for something in the middle: a shorter, wider bag big enough to hold it all. Everything still settles on the bottom, but it doesn't take nearly as long to dig through it. I thought I could be happy with it.

But now I find myself eying people's purses. I imagine how my stuff would fit and what a better job it would do than what I have now. I try to justify spending $230 on this one when chances are it would also fall short of expectations (even though I'm absolutely in love with it). Today, I even went so far as to try convincing myself I should order it before tomorrow so I can get 20% off. And that's a great deal, so how can I pass it up? But I chickened out since I can just see myself, six months from now, back to this same point and out $184.

I wonder if I will ever find a purse that completely and totally lives up to my high expectations and the potential it has when I see it in the store. I highly doubt it, but I'm willing to keep looking.

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