why I can't have nice things

There's an advertising campaign for Capital One credit cards that features the world's worst guardian angel. The ads show an oblivious angel fiddling around on a mobile or being distracted by a pretty girl as his human charge gets hit by falling objects, tumbles down a flight of stairs and generally encounters one unlucky mishap after another. The spots are slyly subversive and hilariously funny; somehow, the idea of such a blithely indifferent angel never fails to crack me up. Until, that is, I realized he was working for me.

I spent all day Sunday down in Old Town Orange, where the Orange Circle is known for it's quaint atmosphere and abundance of 'antique' shops, most of which are really just used furniture and tchotcke emporiums. It's the kind of place where that sad, characterless little table that sat by your auntie's bedside all through the 70's, and which she sold at a yard sale last month for $5 gets slapped with a coat of white paint and a flowery little tag that pronounces it "shabby chic" and gives an asking price of $129.

And yet I am undaunted, for I am a shopper and a treasure hunter by nature, and there are bargains to be had. If you know where to look.

On this day I was in search of a bookcase to fit an empty, narrow space by the living room fireplace. It's been empty since the day I moved in, but suddenly I was obsessed with finding just the right bookcase fill it. I started shopping for it with my mother when she was visiting and now, for some reason, I was obsessed with the idea. I kept going back.

I found the perfect piece on Sunday ~ an off-white, 6 shelf little number with just the right proportions, style and embellishments to fit my precisely eclectic English/French/Asian-influenced-country home-trapped-in-a-California-tract house decor. The $400 asking price was ludicrous, however, and I was leaving town tired and disappointed. Such is the life of an inveterate shopper on a limited budget. You win some, you lose some.

In the parking lot, I pulled my keys from my bag and dug around for my sunglasses. Unable to locate them, I started pulling things out ~ a tape measure, a comb, a lipstick, my camera. I put the camera on the hood of my car. Horrified, I realized that I had lost my favorite glasses. And it came back to me in a flash; I remembered that I had heard something fall as I bent over to examine a table in one of the shops, but had been too distracted to check it out. My glasses ~ I knew it in an instant. And I knew just where they were.

How proud of myself I was, as I got into the car. Imagine, I thought; as tired and hungry as I felt, to be able to focus, with such laser-like intensity, on mentally locating the lost object. Such a lucky, clever girl. Well done, I thought. As I drove off.

With the camera. On my hood.

My $416 digital camera. In it's cute little gray vinyl carrying case. My beautiful camera. That I got for my birthday less than 3 years ago.

I loved that camera. I loved it's sleek, chic, distinctively furturistic design. I loved the way it's 3 little blue lights would light up when it was charging. Like it was happy to see me. I loved that.

I loved the pictures that it took. I loved that it was a birthday present from my husband. I loved it because it was mine.

I went back, of course, as soon as I realized what had happened, but you know the rest. No sign of it in the lot or on the streets, no one had turned it into any of the surrounding businesses. Jose', of the lost and stolen properties unit of the Orange Police Department, promised to let me know if it showed up ~ an absolute hero of a man, I might add, who no doubt resisted the overwhleming urge to laugh and call me an idiot. Or worse. He was sweet and sympathetic, and for that I am eternally grateful. Because I don't deserve it.

Buddha help me, I am a material girl and I love material things. I don't mind telling you that I wept for the loss of that camera. I wept for the loss of the object . I wept for the loss of the gift. I wept for the loss of the pictures. I wept for the loss of my mental facilities. Most of all, I wept for the loss of my self-image as an intelligent, confident, competent woman. I am disconsolate.

I am too stupid to live.

And my angel is so fucking fired.