Handbag Horror

Late last summer Her Bad Mother challenged us to pour out the contents of our purses for all the internet to see. I had just returned from the UK, and never got around to it. It seems to have turned into a meme, and I see it popping up every now and then. Usually people decry the sad state of their purses, and then show the contents, neatly laid out on the table into little groups. Oh, the horror. 4 pieces of trash that should have been thrown out yesterday. One or two toys for the young child. A few expired coupons.

You people have to be faking it. Seriously. That's all you have in your purse???

Today, as I was digging around for receipts to turn in tomorrow for reimbursement from my summer camp teaching gig, I decided it was a good time to clean out the purse, and do this meme in the process. Let me show you what's inside a REAL woman's purse.

But first, the outside.

I get more compliments on it, and I honestly bought it on clearance at WalMart (evil, I know, I know) for less than 6 dollars when I just needed a bag to stick a few things and a book into for a flight without my child 4 years ago (The diaper bag had already returned home with my husband and child, leaving me with no place to stick my wallet and an actual hope of getting some reading done on the plane.) It's a nice sized purse, purchased specifically because it can hold a magazine unrolled, but not look like I'm carrying a suitcase.

Peer into the inside.

Be afraid... be very afraid.

There will be no putting things into little piles for you to easily digest. To get the full impact you must see it poured out like this:

There is NO WAY I am going to catalog all of the contents for you, but here are a few of them: the torn off lid to a box of my hair dye, 2 pairs of earrings and a necklace - taken off at various pool parties, 2 name tags from my church, a sparkly pink plastic fake nail (not mine!), a packet of Wendy's salt, 12 Coke lids - saved to enter the reward numbers, 2 plastic animals from last week's VBS, one overstuffed wallet, countless expired coupons, tissues (new or used? who can tell?), a DVD game, quite a lot of candy and mints, an empty Altoids tin, loose change, a button (picked up off the street for art projects. I kid you not), a piece of paper with stickers given to me by one of my students at camp today, a Polly Pocket purse, my calendar - which I never use, a highlighter - which I frequently use at various rehearsals - very handy, packets of sanitizing hand wipes - several of them falling apart, a ticket from the only movie we've taken MQ to - BEFORE CHRISTMAS - saved for the scrapbook, a notepad with an old shopping list, 2 pens, one sharpened pencil and one unsharpened pencil, lots and lots of other trash and little doodad type toys shoved in there by my daughter. There is also a bit of sand in the bottom of my purse from an impromptu picnic on the beach in Biloxi before a performance of the opera last fall.

My purse is now much lighter.

And my receipts are ready to be turned in.

(What was NOT in it that I wished was? Pain reliever when I had a migraine last week at VBS and again today at day camp. Speaking of which, I need to remedy that...)