The Purse. And the Stupid Thing I Did.

I have this purse. And it's beautiful. No, that doesn't do it justice.

It's exquisite.

It's the result of one very, very, very successful night of craps at the Wynn casino in Las Vegas.

It started as a kind of joke. A ploy, really, to get me to gamble instead of insisting we go find drinks or walk around or anything else but gamble. One of those, "Ok, Maureen, here's $100. I have $100. We'll play craps. You can take whatever money you walk away from the table with, plus half of what I walk away from the table with, and buy whatever you want."

The "whatever you want" part kind of already being pre-established because I had seen this purse while walking around Caesar Forum Shops that afternoon and am pretty sure I hadn't yet stopped talking about it, even though this was probably 10 at night.

So we began playing. And played. And played. And rolled. And rolled, and kept on rolling. It was one of those movie scenes where people starting coming over to the table to get in on the action themselves.

When we finally crapped out (and this is where Mike can probably leave much more information in the comments section about every single die rolled, but you all know I wasn't really paying that much attention. I was dreaming of a certain handbag) we had done... well.

We didn't go right back to the Caesar Shops, although I'm pretty certain we could have (sometimes I think they might be open 24 hours... at the very least, they are definitely open when the wine has been flowing and the gambling being done). I slept on it, and even admit to having second thoughts. But promptly brushed those aside once I saw the bag again.

Mike makes fun of it because it's a bag that comes with it's own bag. When I travel with it, there's no way it goes on the floor under my seat. It first goes in its bag-bag, then it can go on the floor.

One of the beautiful things about the bag is that it has rosettes sewn along the side, at the top. (It's also a deep violet patent leather, and the rosettes are the same patent leather and violet suede, alternating.)

Over time, one of the rosettes starting drooping.

Drooped so far, in fact, that I thought I was in danger of accidentally bumping it and knocking it off.

So I decided to take matters into my own hands. There seemed to be enough space where I could gently pull the rosette down, put super glue on the back of it, and secure it back on to the patent leather.

Yes. Yes, I know. I have typed the words ... "result of one very, very, very successful night of craps," "exquisite," "it's a bag that comes with it's own bag," and ... "superglue" all in the same post.

Take me out now and shoot me.

Of course it didn't go well. Did you know that super glue on violet patent leather doesn't show clear, but rather white? Did you know that glue has a tendency to spread? Did you know that super glue doesn't really work on patent leather?

Can you imagine how many tears were shed when I came to my senses?

After much fretting and gnashing of teeth (and tears), I found a shoe and leather repair shop in Alexandria (Alexandria Shoe Repair & Leather Service on N Fayette in Old Town to be exact). I dropped it off on a Monday morning, and to make what's already been a really long story shorter, I thought I was about to get ripped off (the guy asked what brand of purse it was AND he took a hold of my left hand and told me that was quite a diamond I had on there), but he ended up charging me just $10.

I admit, I was nervous.

It took a few days longer than expected, but low and behold... perfection. They ended up having to take the inside lining of the purse off, remove the rosette from the inside, clean the entire thing, and then reattach. Unreal.

Can't even tell, can you?