I rarely covet specific material items. This is not to say that I don’t buy things – I do – but I don’t generally long for brand-name, designer labeled stuff. Until now, that is. In September last year I was traveling with one of our sales people and she had a tiny Louis Vuitton pocketbook – multi-colored initials on a black background. I fell in love with that bag and have been yearning for one ever since. The real ones go for absurd amounts ($2,000+), which puts them out of my price range. Even if I could afford it, I simply would not pay that much for a hunk of canvas, leather and metal. The alternative is a knock-off, but only if it doesn’t come with the optional jail time. I have no desire to follow in Martha’s footsteps.

Today was a day of small pleasures, intentionally planned to help wipe out the stress of the past week (and to help build a repository of stamina for the two weeks before we go on vacation). Breakfast out (the fact that we have little edible food left in the house was a strong influence), a massage, shopping for spring clothing (Rebecca was my personal shopper and helped me buy about three times what I would have bought on my own - my contribution toward helping the economy out of the toilet), and a movie (no chocolate, but that was the tiniest of flaws).

Movies: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. What an amazing story and incredible acting. I wish there was a book this was based on, so that I could read it. But a book couldn't do justice to the very visual nature of the chaotic narrative, if you can call it that. Jim Carrey looks older and downtrodden, without his characteristic manic energy. Kate Winslet shines as his counterpoint, and the story itself shimmers with the energy of pure light. A movie, like Memento, to watch a few times to catch the real sequence. It does not have the quiet, subtle elegance of Lost in Translation (it is not quiet or subtle or elegant), but it is a movie to make you think about the nature of memories and how the mind works very hard to keep, mend and relive them.