Mi Bolsa

 ”As the purse is emptied, the heart is filled.”

-Victor Hugo

The other day, I was chilling out on the front stoop of my house with my toddler and thought to myself, “I could be doing something productive while he’s out here running around.” So I got my overflowing purse out of the van and dumped the contents out onto the sidewalk just to see what had accumulated in there. This is what I found:

• A small, spiral notebook I use for writing down anything and everything
• 5 pens
• A book of selected poems by Christina Rossetti
• My son’s scorecard from his round at the Sandia golf club in Albuquerque, New Mexico at the beginning of August
• My wallet
• A bag of trail mix leftover from our family road trip several weeks earlier
• Receipts for Safeway (5!), Target, the dentist, the college bookstore, Children’s Place, and Ben and Jerry’s
• Coupons (which I get with my Safeway receipts and never use)
• Writer’s notebook (barely written in)
• An old grocery list
• A ticket stub to the Debbie Reynolds concert I attended at the Arvada Center at the end of July
• Appointment reminder cards to the dentist and oral surgeon
• 2 containers of breath mints
• My cell phone
• A $5 bill (a very rare find)
• My teenage daughter’s Jonas Brothers wristwatch
• A kid’s hairbrush
• A small tube of lotion (a free sample picked up in the pediatrician’s office)
• 5 matchbox cars
• A partially-made friendship bracelet (dumped in my purse by youngest daughter)
• A feminine hygeine product
• A Brio-train car
• A small hand mirror
• Girls’ small hair clips
• A blue Crayola marker

I’ve heard it said that you can tell a lot about a woman by the contents of her purse. So what do these items reveal about me?

#1 I spend far too much time and money at the grocery store.

#2 My life revolves around my kids.

#3 I secretly long to live the writer’s life.

#4 I’m too busy to get organized.

#5 I believe a matchbox car (or 2 or 5) can save the day.

#6 You can never have too many pens on hand.

#7 My life is often a tangled mess at times, a receptacle filled to the brim and spilling over.

What do the contents of your purse reveal about you?

Nose Job

 

This past weekend my 2-year-old son really gave me something to cry about when he gave me a full head-butt backwards into my nose and nearly broke it. Surprisingly and fortunately for me, there was no blood, swelling, or bruising after the incident. But my son, knowing he had done something wrong, looked up at me with concern and said with his thumb stuck in his mouth, “Mama owie?”

This painful experience has caused me to reflect on just how powerful and unpredictable a toddler can be. It has also reminded me of the title of a book I think I’m authorized to write–Everything I Learned About Self-Defense I Learned From My Toddler.

In the course of raising five children, I’ve had my share of mama owies and wrestling matches as I’ve struggled to get them into car seats and shopping carts. And along the way, I’ve also learned a lot of valuable self-defense skills that I think all women could benefit from.

• Imagine how effective you would be at taking someone out if you were grabbed from behind and you gave them a full head-butt in the nose.
• Imagine how difficult it would be for someone to abduct you if you went suddenly limp or ramrod straight.
• Imagine how difficult it would be for someone to remove you from a room if you were clinging to a doorframe with your hands and feet or were sprawled out kicking and screaming on the floor.

My nose is still a bit tender three days later, but I’m so glad I didn’t end up with an unexpected nose job. I’m a little more cautious around my thuggish toddler now. I suppose having a ”head’s up” anticipatory attitude is yet another self-defense skill to add to the list because you never know what life is going to “throw” your way.