Leather or not, it happened
Saturday April 26th 2014, 11:01 pm
Filed under: Life,Lupus

I lucked out.

Thursday night, quite against my better judgment but knowing that medically I must keep my fluid intake up, I tucked a small water bottle into my oversized purse cum knitting bag to take to Knit Night. Usually I just hand-carry it to the car and stick it in a cup holder but I was juggling things and trying to simplify.

I forgot to do the cupholder part. I completely forgot it was in there, period.

It’s a great little water bottle, prettier than the photo gives it credit for, very well designed, very water tight. (The upper brass-colored part is reflecting the room on the right side but in reality the form flows smoothly and simply.) My daughter was paying for it as a souvenir of her business trip to Japan last year just as an earthquake struck, but the cash register apparently kept right on working as the place shook hard around her. She had quite the story to tell.

It is if you have the lid on right, anyway.

I drove my hubby to work Friday morning. The Prius runs remotely via the fob, no need to put a key in, just throw the purse in the back seat and out of his way and go.

When I pulled back into my driveway, though, I fumbled to find that keyring so as to open my front door.

Wait. The keys were–wet?

And yet the fob had done its job and my car had not become stranded. (You can take it apart and have an actual key if you have to, if you can get it to separate; my hands have found it difficult enough before to have had to ask for help.)

As it dawned on me, I was going, wait, where did that… oh no…

I pulled out my Iphone and it was covered in water droplets. I wiped it carefully, I mean I hoped it was carefully is there a more right or more wrong way to do this, off on my clothes, standing there outside in the sun, stunned at the enormity of what I had done to myself.

It worked peachy fine. No we would not be stuck with not only replacing it but losing our grandfathered cheaper family plan that Verizon is itching to ditch.

I unlocked the house, got in, took everything out of my purse and held it over the sink and poured the water out. I examined the leather on the outside of the purse, y’know, that beautiful new-this-Christmas one that has the knitted cable pattern embossed into the leather, the one I’m so inordinately proud of, that I can never replace….

It was dry! The lining had held it all in, and the lid on that bottle must have just then on that trip been knocked loose or the not-tight bottle turned sideways–either that or I was somehow *really* lucky if the lining had held it in like that all night and without the electronics being submerged enough to be ruined.

And I had taken my $150 hearing aid’s bluetooth unit out to charge in the afternoon before Knit Night and had utterly forgotten to put it back in and had grumbled at myself over that.

Everything was fine. The handknit fingerpuppets were dripping wet. Y’know, I think I can handle that…

That could have been an incredibly expensive mistake then and on into the future and yet all it was was the small nuisance of stuffing a succession of towels in and out of there to help my purse dry, with mental thanks in my mother’s direction for teaching us kids from when we were little how to take good care of wet leather shoes so they wouldn’t shrink nor get too stretched out as they dried.

And so I spent yesterday with that box to mail looking forward so much to Janet’s mom knowing I wanted to be there for her and her daughter the best I knew how. I wanted to give that sense of being loved to the whole wide world.

Because even though it was all such a little thing in a life, still, there was definitely this unshakeable feeling that someone up there knew and cared and was looking out for me.


4 Comments so far
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Oh, the sinking feeling – I’m so glad it was soon buoyed up!

Comment by twinsetellen 04.27.14 @ 9:12 am

All’s well that ends well. I’m glad nothing was truly damaged!

Comment by Channon 04.27.14 @ 3:31 pm

All’s well if you can keep your purse from turning into a well. I’m glad your phone and key fob didn’t get ruined and leave you high and dry.

Comment by LauraN 04.27.14 @ 8:04 pm

Whew! That could have ended badly! So happy it didn’t.

Comment by Jody 04.28.14 @ 4:39 am



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