Kill me if I bring another thing into the house,

unless it happens to be on the short list of stuff I still want to buy. Make that need to buy.

Last night, my daughter helped me sort through a huge number of lipsticks I have purchased over the years. (In case anyone wants to know, there were a disturbing number of lipsticks in a very Goth color of purplish red, only one of which I have retained as a memorial, and also because sometime or another I will be tempted to wear it [its name is "Diva"--I'm half-convinced that's why I buy these crazy colors, because something about the silly name tickles me], and will wear it, and will then remember why I have now recycled all of them! Kill me if I buy another Goth-girl purple-red lipstick!)

I am in a constant state of sorting and giving away stuff. Currently, there's a bag stuffed full of some clothes I haven't worn for quite awhile. Hopefully, some worthy organization or another will prosper in a small way from these items plus the several more items I will manage to cull from my closet before the day comes when I put the bag with its stuffed-full sisters on the curb for the Friends of the Big Brothers and Sisters or whomever.

Tax time always reminds me of the crazy way money gets spent around here (notice how the money just "gets spent," like there's not a profligate lipstick-buying out-of-control consumer buying cosmetics and clothes and Meyer lemons). In my mind, I'm sorting through all the available ways to save more, spend less. But that makes me feel panicky. The kind of panic that makes a girl go out and buy stuff.

Meanwhile, I haven't found a way to regret the chrome yellow Adidas cross-trainers I found for a bargain in Chicago. Did I know that I needed a pair of brilliant yellow shoes when I crossed the threshold of the Nordstrom Rack? I did not, but the shoes called my name. The guy who hailed a cab for me and Lis as we left our hotel admired them, and that constitutes evidence, in my book, of their utter necessity. (I will spare you the details of the other yellow shoes I'm still thinking about, the ones that are in fact still on the short list.)