Partway through our dinner, however, the twinge of a headache I'd noticed earlier grew steadily worse. Initially I was a little concerned because I never get headaches, but then I realized my neck muscles on the right side were pretty knotted up, so I figured it was just tension headache.
However, a little later in the bookstore, my muscles were spazzing, and I was in so much pain and discomfort that we cut things short and headed home.
Yes, it was bad enough that I actually passed up my once-a-month splurge on Godiva Chocolate Cheesecake!
When we walked in the house later, I was wracking my brains to figure out what had caused my misery, and unloaded my purse onto the kitchen counter.
My purse!!
It felt like I'd just set down a watermelon.
On a whim, I went in and weighed it, and was astounded.
8 1/2 pounds!
What would possibly weigh so much? I wondered, and emptied the contents on top of my chest freezer to see.
Here is a rundown on what I'd been lugging around all last month:
1. Purse
2. Wallet
3. Cell Phone
4. My personal calendar, a pile of mail and other important papers stuffed in a side pocket
5. A month's accumulation of receipts (which I was always having to stuff back in because they would burst out every time I unzipped the top)
6. A crushed up baggie of Cracklin' Oat Bran cereal (an attempt to keep Judah quiet in church a month ago)
7. A Minute Maid juice box (yet another emergency ration for Judah)
8. 2 action figures
9. A novelty Gummi Pizza candy
10. 3 root beer hard candies from a restaurant
11. A long-lost binky
12. A hair pick
13. 2 hand lotions (because one just isn't enough apparently)
14. 6 Overnight Feminine Hygiene pads (Why? In case of a natural disaster, and 6 menstruating women happened to be in need?!)
15. 5 lipsticks in nearly identical colors (?!) and a tinted Burt's Bees lip gloss
16. A baggie with 8, dead rechargable batteries (Again, WHY?! How handy!)
17. 3 loose sticks of Wrigley's gum
18. A new, full pack of Eclipse gum I bought a month ago but couldn't find
19. An unopened bottle of baby pain reliever tabs (which had fallen out of the diaper bag but never got put back)
20. Baby nail clippers
21. Sunglasses
22. Keys
23. 1 permanent marker (from a trip to the Post Office nearly 2 weeks ago)
24. 8 pens in varying colors (one in every conceivable pocket, yet still not handy enough to find when I needed them)
25. A highlighter (for all my highlighting emergencies)
26. A twistable red crayon (rescued from Judah's clutches)
27. 2 hair clips
28. Button to an unknown garment
29. 2 rolls of 4 year old film I keep meaning to have developed at Costco
30. 5 matchbox cars (Heavy. Die cast. Metal.)
31. A plastic toy helicopter
32. A lightweight plastic toy fire engine
33. A very heavy change purse which contained:
1 old wheat back penny
1 Canadian penny
2 Chuck E. Cheese tokens
1 heavy 1979 'silver' $1 coin,
1 smaller, more recent Sacajawea $1 coin
30 pennies
14 nickels
14 dimes
and 24 quarters all kept on hand as emergency lunch money for Jericho
34. An asthma inhaler
35. Box of toothpicks from a restaurant
36. Used gum in old wrappers
37. Lint
38. a straw wrapper
39. A bread bag tab (for all my bread-bag twisting emergencies)
40. A box of toothpicks from a restaurant we went to 3 months ago
41. A $5 bill
Is it any wonder my neck was protesting? I could survive on a deserted island for a week out of that thing!
Wait a minute...I had to give up cheesecake because my purse was too heavy?
That's just wrong!
I think perhaps it's time I downsized.
7 comments:
ROTFLOL! My receipts always seem to escape and scatter across whatever cashier counter I'm standing at. ;-) Your list is too funny!
Wow, your purse is quite similar to mine, especially the loose gum papers filled with already chewed gum. And minus the kid toys and food supply. All those lipsticks and I only wear one of them most of the time. But just in case I get out the door wearing that unusual shade of puce, I am ready. As if I would wear puce. The color puce looks like puke. I wonder if that is why they call it puce? Anyway, that purse is too darn heavy and you definitely need to 'lighten up'. Do you ever actually DO anything with the receipts you carry around? I find I never do. And this has been going on for decades. Because once I happened to have a receipt that I actually NEEDED and used to get back a buck two fifty and ever since I think I might be lucky, I don't know. My neck hurts, I gotta go.
I'm thinking you could win a prize on "Let's Make a Deal"!
I hardly ever have food products or toys in my purse anymore. I'm lucky that way.
Love the picture! Made me LOL!
Holy crap, your purse weighs more than ANY of my kids did at birth! That's amazing! And dang funny! I'm so glad you took a picture of it...you know, for posterity's sake!
Shauna~Isn't that so embarrassing? I was forever apologizing, "Sorry...I guess I need to clean my purse out, huh? Heh-heh? The cashiers would just look at me like, "Whatever lady, could you just hurry it along? We've got a line a mile long waiting to get through here..."
FrumpGram~Yeah, I'm not sure WHY I keep all those receipts in my purse. I guess it's sort of a temporary holding tank until I can put them in the box I keep all that junk in for the next 7 years for tax purposes. You know, because we might get audited or something. Then, because I've kept them for so long, I become attached to them, and keep them until we move a few years later, and find 3 boxes of such things in the rafters of our garage and scratch our heads like, "Why?! Why do we still have receipts from our first year of marriage 14 YEARS AGO hogging up space in our garage?? It IS time to lighten up!
Jenster~Be thankful your kids are past that stage! A few months ago, a Capri sun met some small scissors down in the depths of my purse. When I got to church, I had the audacity to think the church had a major problem with sugar ants in the sanctuary...and then I followed the trail to my purse!!! *blushes* Ants are the bain of my existence.
Cecily R~Yeah, heavier than one of mine, too! After cleaning it out, it felt light as a feather in comparison! LOL, I had to keep checking to assure myself I did, in fact, have my wallet and keys and sunglasses inside.
Omigosh, this is SO FUNNY!!! Becky, you are a hoot! I am so impressed that you had a juice box in there and it didn't explode!!!
Becky! I don't think I've laughed at a post this hard. ROTFL!
I couldn't keep it to myself, I read this to my mother and she didn't think it was as funny... it made sense to her! LOL!!!
Thank you for the laugh. Sorry about your headache, but according to your new post, you got your cheesecake after all.
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