emergency room

there is verrrrry little room for emergencies when you're not buying anything new. if your tights rip at work, if you get totally splashed by a bus in a rainstorm on your way somewhere and your socks are soaked, if your cat's litter box gets lost during a move....there's no nipping across the street to grab a new one.

this year, buying something requires foresight, planning, and patience -- i've gotta search for the item on craigslist, maybe wait a few days and check back until someone posts the item i need, arrange the meet-up -- so it's hard to know what to do when say, you're in beautiful belize in a tiny town and it's 40 degrees out and you're gonna be in the sun all day BUT you've somehow lost your sunglasses AND your boat's about to leave!! when you don't have three days to solve the problem, what do you do?

if it hadn't been for that teeny emergency, i would have made it through my vacation without buying anything new. but that day, i caved and ran across the street to a wee shop and purchased its only pair of lady sunnies. i suppooooose this could be considered an "essential" -- i mean, it's not healthy to spend the entire day in blaring sunlight without any eye protection. OK, maybe that's bull roar. but it did get me thinking about how much i rely on stores for those moments of desperation.