Pgh Lesbian Correspondents

A water bottle.  At REI (shhh!).  Yes.  And two travel mugs.  For more money than I care to admit. 

I coveted this bottle.  Two of my coworkers have this bottle … it is made of stainless steel and is pretty tough.  It has no nasty plastic additives and will greatly minimize my reliance on bottled water and disposable cups. 

I hope. 

When I arrived home, I realized that I have also recently bought a new purse that is not water bottle friendly.  I really need a messenger bag.  But that involves buying more stuff and I already have a lot of stuff.  Plus, I like my purse.  It makes me feel like Ann in That Girl.  Minus the kite.

Plus, if I show up at work with the water bottle and messenger bag sported by my coworkers, I'll seem like a dork.  Even though emulation is a definite form of flattery in this case. 

Ledcat wants me to use a messenger bag.  I suspect she thinks it is more authentically lesbian than a cute little purse from Macy's (the sale was awesome).  But the problem with the messenger bag comes for those of us who are not petite or slim.  If you have breasts and curves, the messenger bag is a bunchy, scrunchy device.  There's no way to fling it across your chest without heavily accentuating said boobs.  Believe me, I've been there with my healthy back bag.  I look like a grotesquely overgrown 6th grade crossing guard in a really ugly safety belt.  Minus the awesome badge.  My back was healthy, but my boobs were rather uncomfortable.

It isn't so bad in the winter, but this is August and there will be at least three more weeks before it goes below 32 degrees so I have to consider these things.

Boobs aside, I have to decide about this water bottle thing.  I thirst a lot so I spend a lot of money on bottled water (or begging free cups that I end up disposing of anyway).  My vehicle must have at least 39 half-empty bottles of various beverages rolling around and probably another dozen plastic cups I brought home to recycle.  It is embarrassing because I also happen to be very lazy about actually removing them from the car to put in the recycling bin.  I hate to waste the remaining water even though it has been heated to near boiling by weeks of occupancy in my CRV.  I convince myself that if I ever happen to be the girl who rolls off the road and has to live in my car for 72 hours, I can subsist on the water, eat the miscellaneous dog biscuits tucked in the car seat and still have empty bottles for other needs.  Needless to say, Ledcat does not think that kind of preparation warrants the daily shoving of bottles into the back seat so she can get in the car. 

If I get the right kind of messenger bag, I can dump my laptop case and still carry my purse!  But I'm getting a new work laptop so I have to wait to see if it will fit — apparently, my former bag caused damage to the laptop because it wasn't a good fit.  I've had enough disapproving lectures from the IT department to last me a lifetime. 

Great. I've identified a reason to procrastinate and it has a solid enough relationship to my paycheck that I can rest easy with it.  Either that or winter will set in and the boob/bag issue won't be a problem for several months. 

So I'll give the bottle a shot on Monday and see what happens. 

The other amusing thing was that my parents went with me to REI.  My father mused how he used to trod that very ground when it was J&L Steel and he worked in the mill (now he works in a coke plant which is like a mill, but not really).  Upon realizing that I misled her about REI”s ice cream selection, my mother stalked off to the camping section to sit in the chairs – she tested several models. My father discovered a series of tin cups that are actually perfect for my 92 year old grandmother to use so he bought a set.  They were very Little House on the Prairie — remember when Laura and Mary had to share a cup until Mr. Edwards brought one through the winter storm on Christmas Eve?  It is in the book.  The overpriced water bottle generated a whole round of stories from my father about his childhood camping equipment which was mostly WW II surplus equipment.  I explained that the lack of a World War in the past sixty years has left me with little choice but REI.  That got a snort from my mother, but didn't even phase my father's trip down memory lane.  Apparently, he expects me to soak wool in cold water and wrap it around my water bottle every morning.  That's exactly what every lesbian family needs … batches of wet wool. 

After spending time with their granddogs and grandkitties, the parents headed back for the suburbs.  Ledcat is at a concert.  So I'm left to my own devices with Facebook, Trillian and the promise of a new phalate free existence.