The Collector

Los Angeles, California

I frequently tell this joke based on something that Billy once said. It's about my hair products. I have little to no sales resistance when it comes to hair products. I need the ones that make my hair fuller, shinier, and healthier. I also want the ones that give me my hair a messy, slept-in look; the ones which add texture, and those which profess to add volume. I like foams, sprays, mists, gels, and oils. I am particularly fond of Bumble & Bumble products which I buy at Sephora. But I'm not above purchasing John Freida products at my local CVS. So here is the joke: If anything happens to me, my husband is going to sell all my hair products on Ebay then go to Europe for a few months with the proceeds.

He could probably also do a weekend somewhere really nice here in California, if he sold my collection of greeting cards. I may have written here before that I have an intense relationship with paper. I LOVE paper, it comprises the wheels on my life's car. I love books, and stationery, and tablets of paper. I bag all of the little pads of paper that they have in hotel rooms. Forget the toiletries, I want the notepads. I stow them in my luggage the first day, and hope that housekeeping will replenish the stock so I can take those too. A rueful confession, this, though as a friend of my mother's used to say about ashtrays, They wouldn't put their name on them if they didn't want you to take them. And I do use them. I have a stack of them on my desk and they are my go-to notepads for, well, for notes! For each page that I use I get a mini-memory flash of that particular hotel or resort on that particular vacation. A blast from the past, as they say.

But, back to those greeting cards. I have a lot of them. At last count, somewhere around three hundred and counting. Which wouldn't really be a problem. Let's say that I have twenty to thirty friends whom I could mail cards out to--get well soon (Sandra), girlfriend support (DG), birthday (Diana and Gwen), etc. I could run through these pretty darn quick. But here is the rub--I've lost my will to do those cards. I don't know what that is. In the old days, I could sit down on the floor at my coffee table with a glass of wine or a short one of something else, and write and address these cards. I'd put a little note in, write the address in colorful and matching ink, then decorate the envelope with stickers (or even earlier, rubber stamps). I'd put a thematic postage stamp on it, and a return-address label that features Rocky & Bullwinkle or a picture of our late, great aussie. I had this thing down. But then. But then, I somehow lost it. I started procrastinating. I missed events. A stack of purchased Thanksgiving cards wrapped around to the following Thanksgiving. A stack of Valentine's Day cards did the same, with the result that I sent out a Jacquie Lawson ecard instead (find out more about here wonderful products here).

The problem with all of this laxity is that I didn't pull back on purchasing the cards. Last September, in Carmel with Las Chicas girlfriends, I spent almost forty bucks on greeting cards at a new store that we discovered there. I still love buying the cards. I just don't seem to love sending them as much as I used to. And that's the thing about collections. You get onto something you like to acquire, and if it has no function, or you are not following through on its function, then those things just sorta...accumulate. Which is not good.

And just to swing this around, I do use those hair products. Seriously. I am a firm believer in the layered look, and I put one on top of the other in a succession of scents and textures; liquid, gel, or mousse, in hopes for healthy, shiny, voluminous locks. I just never seem to use any of the bottles of product, up. As a result, they multiply like rabbits down there under my sink. How many do I have? You can't handle the truth.

It would be honest to say that if I eliminated all the paper (books included), and hair products in my house there would be a lot more room here. And that would be space that I could fill by, let say, collecting more Tom's brand shoes. Or more logo tee shirts and baseball caps. Or more cocktail napkins. Don't even get me started, as I'll just drag you down with me. Really. But do remember, if you get caught in a bind with bad hair and needing to send out a card, you know where to find me. Meanwhile, I thank you for reading my this particular blog post. Don't stop here.  I've got a whole collection of 'em...