Time To Clean Out The Purse...

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So this morning I was looking for my bluetooth. I don't like to drive carpool without it. Not only do I have five children in my car who can - on occasion - be a little loud, but in Illinois it's illegal to talk on your cell phone while in a school zone. Our area has interpreted this to mean that handsfree is ok, and as much as I sometimes am the rebel, this is not one of those instances.

I didn't (duh!) have time for a major search before driving carpool, so I had to wait to search until I got home a little later in the day. I knew it was somewhere in my house, luckily. Even more luckily, it was charged, so I had proof of this. When I tried calling someone, my phone immediately hooked into my bluetooth, which it won't do if I am more than 35 feet from it or if it isn't charged and turned on.

Phew. I know I didn't lose it (which is my paranoia because it's a tiny little thing)! The trick was to find it. I drove my car around the block and saw that it still had a connection, so it had to be somewhere in my car. It, of course, doesn't belong in my car, but that doesn't stop it from falling out of my purse. And no, it wasn't in the zipped pocket of my purse where it does belong.

I searched high and low in my car, but I couldn't find it anywhere. I finally gave up and went inside.

As I thought more on it, I realized that it had to be somewhere within my cavernous purse (I'm still not used to carrying a large purse). It's possible that it's accumulated more than what it should have and that the bluetooth may have fallen somewhere inside there ... where it doesn't quite belong.

Thus commenced my purse cleaning.

I am still not used to carrying such a large, cavernous purse, and it's possible that things accumulate here that never used to in my old smaller purses. I'd like to note that my camera was also in my purse, but I never figured out how to take a picture of my camera in my purse with my camera.

Yes, my wallet is huge. I have a ton of loyalty and unused gift cards in my wallet, which makes up the majority of the girth. If only it were cash that made it impossible to close instead of a ummm Marshall Fields gift card, among others (yes, I still have a Marshall Fields gift card in my wallet that has money on it).

I have gum in there, and luckily, it wasn't just an empty container and there were zero empty gum papers anywhere in the purse - go me.  There were even seven pieces of gum left!

Ahhhh, my iGo.  How I love my iGo.  How it let me recharge my phone so that I could stream the Northwestern game while working at Little Miss's school carnival on Saturday.  Oh.  Yeah.  It's totally out of batteries and needs to be charged - tell me you're surprised.

Aren't these cute?  They have been living in my purse for over a year.  I'm not quite sure why I keep them in there if I'm not going to use them.  I always feel a little weird when I see people brushing their teeth in public places.  And hey, I've got the gum already.  And I have no more need to be somewhere sans my toothbrush overnight...

Ahhh, my collapsible hairbrush with its mirror.  Granted, I keep my hair curly 99% of the time, so I don't need to brush my hair.  The mirror is awfully handy though. Ok ok ok.  I keep it for Little Miss because of her rat's nest of a head of hair that looks like she slept in it two minutes after I brushed it.

Car keys.  'nuff said, no?

Ummm a random sample of body spray that I got this summer when I went to go see a movie?  Yeah, so I probably (ok, I really really really hope I) don't need that in my purse.

Lotion - always a good thing to keep on hand, especially as winter and dry, chapped hands season is settling into Chicago.

And hand sanitizer.  I'm really not a an of it actually.  But what kind of mom doesn't carry it with her?

Oooo look, a quarter!  I found money.  Then again, this isn't quite the same as when I find money in the washer that actually doesn't belong to me.  My balloon deflates.

Uhhhh five working pens.  Do I get credit for the fact that all five are working and I'm not carrying around any that are out of ink at least?

Yeah... now we get to the really useless stuff.  This would be a little jiggly snake thing that Mister Man got from the kids' area at our hotel in Florida for correctly guessing the trivia question.  Uhhh yes, that would be since the second week of August.  And it isn't even mine.  Oops.  I've since given it to him to play with.

Ahhh, I remember last Monday when I brought supplies to Mister Man's OT session so she could get it done while we waited.  Annnnnnnd they're still in my purse.

Along with crayons from some restaurant we've visited lately.  Or maybe multiple restaurants.  Wait, maybe having crayons in my purse makes me a good mom.  Hmmm....  Nah, only if I actually let the wee ones color with them, I suppose.

And apparently I'm also carrying around nail polish just in case I need a touch up while I'm out and about.  It might help if that were the color (or close to it) that I'm wearing now.

I also have a lovely selection of lip products from lipsticks to lip glosses to lip plumpers to healing balms.  You never know what mood you'll be in.  Yep, that's why I have twelve - count 'em, twelve - different ones in my purse.  Yikes!

Ooo look, it's a little ponytailer for Little Miss!  Because I would have been able to find it in my purse had I needed to put her hair up for gymnastics after forgetting to do so.  Yep, absolutely.  *sigh*

And then there's the assorted detrius - receipts, tickets, cards, and so forth.  The vast majority of it?  Garbage.

You'll note that you see no sunglasses in there. Unfortunately I actually did lose those, and I know exactly where. I traded out this purse for my normal small one earlier in the week and the sunglasses didn't fit in it. They fell off the top, and I forgot about them until it was too late. And by "too late" I mean the next day when it was sunny and I couldn't see a thing because my light blue overly sensitive eyes couldn't bear that harsh rays of the sun's light. And by "sunny" I mean it was daylight and there were white clouds all over the sky.

On the plus side, my bluetooth was in the bottom of my purse somewhere. Phew! I was so excited that I forgot to take a picture of it though.

Since I returned only selected items to my purse: my wallet, the gum, two pens, two lip glosses, my keys, my phone (which was also not pictured but was in there), a fully charged iGo (seriously, I go nowhere without this anymore), the hairbrush, lotion, and of course a new pair of sunglasses. It's amazing how light my purse is now - and I suppose it also explains why my shoulder had started to bother me.

I'm almost ready to move to a smaller purse. My iGo doesn't fit in my super small purses though (and my new phone doesn't fit so great either), so I'm stuck for the moment with this one. I think it's time to invest in some midsize purses....

So what do you find in your purses?

New Places, Old Faces

Ok, first -- thanks for all the comments! I just got home from yoga and am exhausted but wanted to get the post out that I wrote right before I left for yoga and what a motivator to see all the nice things you lovely readers have to say!


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Well, I’m officially moved into the new office. Lots of interesting things today.


We’ll start out with Mister Man. Around 9:45, he woke up screaming and crying. His tummy hurt, and it was not easy to calm him down. Fifteen minutes later, he was up again. And fifteen minutes later. It continued this way until I asked if he wanted Mommy or Daddy to sleep with him to help him (nothing was comforting him), which we’ve never done. He only wanted me (awwww), so I “slept” in his bed until I finally called the doctor at 11. Of course, that was the last time he woke up. When the doctor called back, he was finally asleep – I’d found the magic place on his tummy to massage and apparently that did it. According to the doctor, the left side (I knew it wasn’t his appendix btw or would have been at the hospital by 10) is generally gas or something trying to work its way through. Can you imagine that ER trip? “Ma’am, your son’s fine. He just needs to toot.”

Needless to say, I was a little tired when I woke up earlier than normal to get to work. Today’s trip in took me just over a half hour, which is less time than the old work took me. Yay, already!

When I got to my cube, I realized how tight they really are. We have no size differentiation anymore, except for the SVPs, and the cubes are tiny with low walls and you can see everyone. Even the SVPs don’t have much more space, just enough for a chair. Because of the configuration, I have six people within a four foot radius of me.

I also had a bag sitting on my desk. Hmmm… pretty unassuming, isn't it?

I opened up the bag and discovered:


While I don’t wear glasses, a lens cleaner frequently comes in handy. At least I think that’s what this was.

And:

Yep, because I refuse to wear glasses, I need a magnifier to read the type. And a ruler because rulers are just cool.

And:

Gotta love the mugs. And of course it has my company’s logo – remind me to tell you my funny logo mug story from last week soon. Apparently while they say you can’t drink at your desk, they will provide you with a mug. Just don’t use it at the office.

And:

Ooooo, now this is cool. It’s my very own Bluetooth. Now I just have to figure out how to use it. I’m assuming it works with my phone. And you wonder why the admins were complaining that these goodie bags were disappearing off people’s desks. (Although that alone, I found quite depressing.)

And lastly, there was a coupon for $3 for the company café – btw we have a café not a cafeteria. Quite upscale, no? I didn’t use it today, as I didn’t know that we’d have such a lovely treat, so I brownbagged it. At my desk. And yes, the HR guy happened to walk past as I was eating – drat the luck – and lectured me about eating at my desk. I guess that is one they’re going to enforce. I had my afternoon orange in the café while editing a deck.

There were some unique issues though. They built the building like a cheap hotel, apparently, and they neglected to factor that in when they decided to have wall-mounted adjustable monitors for everyone. If anyone with enough girth – and it doesn’t take much, mind you – walked down the aisle, the monitors shook, and you could feel the vibrations in your chair. The first time I wondered if it was more earthquake, but it was far too frequent. After much experimentation, we discovered that the shaking monitor syndrome was mitigated by pushing it all the way up to the wall and pinning it there. Voila, motion sickness averted!

Oh, and we have headsets for conference calls since speakerphones are banned. Considering people on the other end of my phone conversations could hear other people talking when no one was on speakerphone, that’s definitely a good call. The not so good call? One desk, one headset. That goes in your ear. That I’m supposed to share with two other people. Not that I have anything against the two lovely women I’m sharing my cube with, but some things just aren’t meant to be shared. Anything that goes in an orifice falls into that category in my book. Even our ops centers have a different headset for every employee on every shift. Maybe I can trade my Bluetooth for my own headset. Or maybe I’ll just use the handset instead.

Speaking of which, I also couldn’t get on my phone at work. Because I share my desk with two other people – we’re supposed to work varying days but it isn’t calculated correctly – my physical phone there isn’t tied to my personal phone line. I have to log in to send my phone to the desk. And the login instructions didn’t work. Up went my first flag to join the sea of others. (On day one, they have about two flags for every person so that when you have a technical issue, the guys know who to go to -- apparently they've had a few issues as people have moved in so far. Comforting, really.) Fortunately, that was fixed fairly easily. They had the wrong password in the brochure we had sitting at our desks, so I just had to get my password reset.

Then I couldn’t access the network with my computer. Considering that all my files are on the shared drive and email is pretty critical to what I do, that was a problem. Up went flag number two. After three reboots and some fiddling by a tech guy, I was finally able to connect. Yay!

Later, I had to print something. The printers are actually pretty cool. I’m constantly irritated by the people who print things and never pick them up, then print again and don’t pick that up, etc. It’s a huge waste of paper and in my mind at least, rude! Now we can print to any printer on our floor, and the job is sent to the network. We then swipe our badge at the printer we choose, select the job we want to print (of ours) and print. The only problem is that the printer tool that (per the instructions) “will automatically recognize your office location” had no idea where I was located, so it wouldn’t let me choose a printer. Up went flag number three! Again, the nice tech guys fiddled and found a way to manually enter the printer. The thing that made me feel better at least is that each time they did the “huh, that should have worked. This is weird” kind of a comment that made me feel like less of a moron.

Then my admin delivered a new toy. It’s called my soft phone. Up went flag number 4, as the tech guys have to configure it.

Has anyone ever seen one of these things before? It's actually far cooler than it looks, I swear. Whenever I'm logged into the network at work now (using my remote access, of course!), I log into the software, plug in this funky looking device, and my work phone is automatically routed to this gizmo. I no longer have to leave the voicemail on my phone of “Hi, I’m rarely in the office, so don’t bother leaving a message. Send me an email or call my Blackberry.” Admittedly, I say it nicer, but it’s still an odd kind of message. I can call in or receive calls, and it even flashes cool colors when it rings – or so I’ve been told. I love technology!

I also dropped off my registration for the fitness center. We have a regular Bally’s down there now. I didn’t have time to do an orientation – I got there at 7am and left at 4:56 because I really, really couldn’t deal with traffic if I left any later – so I didn’t see the whole thing, but I’m excited to have it in my building. I figure I’ll join and feel good about it but rarely spend time there. Usually I’m in too much of a rush with work to go to the gym. It’s literally been probably seven years since I’ve been to the gym at work because I’d rather go home and see my family or relax then spend more time at work. Do I get to feel good just for turning in my registration?

I finally started home, much later than I’d hoped, of course. Supposedly I finish work at 3pm on Mondays, but that obviously didn’t happen. Although I had to sit through three lights at one intersection waiting to turn left because someone must have one of the emergency vehicle things that turns their lights green but then skips my green arrow, I still got home in fifty-two minutes. At 5pm. And while sitting at a stupid light through three cycles watching the emergency light flash on, then off, then the other direction went, then it would flash on again…. You really would have admired my restraint!

And now I’m home and mostly sane after some of the weird things today… and I’ll even be on time for yoga! (Ok, so I'm posting this after yoga -- I had to leave if I wanted to be on time!)