Does anybody know what's going on?

A-hem. Excuse me. Yes, over here. (Furtive look around to see if anyone is eavesdropping.) Could you explain the financial crisis to me?

You see, I’ve done the required reading (New York Times and AP stories), and I’ve even done the bonus reading (editorials, Newsweek analyses), and I’ve also listened to the network news analysts. I have investments in both stocks and bonds, and I don’t glaze over or tune out when I meet with our financial planner.

But I don’t get it. And like high school kids in chemistry class who don’t dare admit that the chapter on atomic orbitals is confounding, I’m guessing that I'm not the only one who doesn’t get how it will affect us, the middle-class consumers and taxpayers.

Yes, I understand that there are people who bought houses far beyond their means (like the woman interviewed on CNN last week who makes $10/hour as a hair stylist yet bought a $495,000 house on Long Island), and I understand that many folks are mired in credit card debt. I understand that real estate has tanked, so have sympathy for those who have to sell their houses right now. And I know that, should the market stay the same, I might be able to afford a Winnebago in my retirement but not gas to drive it. And my daughter's education fund? It might cover text books.

I have a slim grasp of what hedge funds and derivatives are, and I get the rudiments of Wall Street — the buying and selling of stock as a way for corporations to raise capital. But the rest of what Wall Street does seems like magic — or dark magic — where the magician waves his wand and literally pulls money out of a hat.

It hasn’t really hit me yet what the economy’s implosion will do to my daily life. I can still buy food and pay my bills. I still have a few writing assignments. My daughter gets on the school bus each morning and returns each afternoon. I can buy gas for my car and bread at the bakery. So the economic crisis feels like this abstract thing out there — like a hurricane that’s affecting another part of the country. But which part? And what kind of damage is it causing? And will it soon show up here?

If I knew this, then maybe I would have understood what Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson planned on doing with that $700 billion. Exactly who received this money? And by that, I mean the name of the company and/or entity, and the name of the individual in charge. And what are they going to do with it?

I vaguely understand that it is supposed to free up credit, so people and companies could borrow money. But at this point, I don’t anticipate needing a loan in the near future. So is my ship still in danger of sinking? Or will I remain afloat, only having to navigate choppy water?

And what exactly is happening to the people who got us into this mess — the well-paid financiers and “creative thinkers” who kept pulling money out of the hat even though they knew there was nothing behind it? Like, a-hem, Mr. Paulson himself, former Goldman Sachs CEO whose net worth has been projected at around $700 million. I don’t see him throwing $10 million into the bailout kitty. If we could round up 7,000 of his Wall Street cohorts, there’s the $700 billion right there.

I wish someone would write, “Economic Crisis for Real People.” A lot of us might benefit. Maybe the bailout package would have passed Congress. Or maybe we, the well-informed voters, would have insisted that the bill be drafted in a different form in the first place.

But who am I to say? Maybe I’m just the dumb kid sitting in the back of the class.

You see, I’ve done the required reading (New York Times and AP stories), and I’ve even done the bonus reading (editorials, Newsweek analyses), and I’ve also listened to the network news analysts. I have investments in both stocks and bonds, and I don’t glaze over or tune out when I meet with our financial planner. 

But I don’t get it. And like high school kids in chemistry class who don’t dare admit that the chapter on atomic orbitals is confounding, I’m guessing that I'm not the only one who doesn’t get how it will affect us, the middle-class consumers and taxpayers.

Yes, I understand that there are people who bought houses far beyond their means (like the woman interviewed on CNN last week who makes $10/hour as a hair stylist yet bought a $495,000 house on Long Island), and I understand that many folks are mired in credit card debt. I understand that real estate has tanked, so have sympathy for those who have to sell their houses right now. And I know that, should the market stay the same, I might be able to afford a Winnebago in my retirement but not gas to drive it. And my daughter's education fund? It might cover text books. 

I have a slim grasp of what hedge funds and derivatives are, and I get the rudiments of Wall Street — the buying and selling of stock as a way for corporations to raise capital. But the rest of what Wall Street does seems like magic — or dark magic — where the magician waves his wand and literally pulls money out of a hat.

It hasn’t really hit me yet what the economy’s implosion will do to my daily life. I can still buy food and pay my bills. I still have a few writing assignments. My daughter gets on the school bus each morning and returns each afternoon. I can buy gas for my car and bread at the bakery. So the economic crisis feels like this abstract thing out there — like a hurricane that’s affecting another part of the country. But which part? And what kind of damage is it causing? And will it soon show up here?

If I knew this, then maybe I would have understood what Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson planned on doing with that $700 billion bailout. Exactly who received this money? And by that, I mean the name of the company and/or entity, and the name of the individual in charge. And what are they going to do with it?

I vaguely understand that it is supposed to free up credit, so people and companies could borrow money. But at this point, I don’t anticipate needing a loan in the near future. So is my ship still in danger of sinking? Or will I remain afloat, only having to navigate choppy water?

And what exactly is happening to the people who got us into this mess — the well-paid financiers and “creative thinkers” who kept pulling money out of the hat even though they knew there was nothing behind it? Like, a-hem, Mr. Paulson himself, former Goldman Sachs CEO whose net worth has been projected at around $700 million. I don’t see him throwing $10 million into the bailout kitty. If we could round up 7,000 of his Wall Street cohorts, there’s the $700 billion right there.

I wish someone would write, “Economic Crisis for Real People.” A lot of us might benefit. Maybe the bailout package would have passed Congress. Or maybe we, the well-informed voters, would have insisted that the bill be drafted in a different form in the first place.

But who am I to say? Maybe I’m just the dumb kid sitting in the back of the class.

Treasure hunting

I hate to shop. Never liked it. Just ask my mother. 

Whenever we visited my grandmother in Boston — traveling from our home in the hinterlands of Vermont — my mother would drag me and my sister on day-long shopping expeditions to Filene's or R.H. Stearns, where she would sequester us in a small dressing room while she tried on what seemed like 50 dresses at a time. It was more boring than church.

Worse, she rarely wore the items that she purchased. I remember one particular dress — dark blue and resembling a Naval officer's uniform — that cost $98 (in 1974) at Stearns. She wore it five times (I counted). Or the 100 percent polyester pantsuit in a gray/brown floral print, which belongs in the Worst Dressed section of the Fashion Hall of Fame, along with the patent leather go-go boots to match, all from Filene’s. She might have gotten away with it on the streets of New York. But in Vermont? It looked like a costume.

Not surprisingly, my sense of fashion now tends toward the practical (boring). If a pair of capris and a shirt can’t be worn on a bike as well as to a business meeting, they aren’t worth buying.

Which makes it hard to explain the allure of TJMaxx, the fashion-for-less department store that sits in a corner of downtown Rutland. At least once a season, I find myself wandering the aisles and digging for bargains in not just women's clothing but also in housewares, linens, picture frames, and kids' toys. It's the first stop on the Procrastination Express. 

What makes it so enticing? Does it spark the latent hunter-gatherer in me? Is finding a softshell Patagonia jacket for $49.99 — hiding amongst the women's pajamas — like coming across a rare Goji berry in the forest?

Or is hunting for bargains just a game? A treasure hunt for grown-ups: Patagonia capris for $19.99, Lole Bermuda shorts on the clearance rack for $10, hand-milled lavender soap from Provence for $4.99, a Le Creuset Dutch oven regularly $250 marked down to $49.99, kids' Levis with rhinestone-capped rivets for $14.99, Waterford crystal candleholders for $12.99. 

It feels like plundered booty.

So if Andy asks me what I did today, I won’t admit that I wasted time. Instead, I’ll say I went treasure hunting.

Handbags and windbreakers

My friend Nigel, who lives in New Zealand, always enjoys pointing out the amusing differences between American English and the King's English (or is it now the Queen's?). In England and its former colonies, a bathroom is a place where people bathe, while a toilet (water closet, loo ...) is where we perform necessary anatomical eliminations.

He has also reminded me that what I refer to as a sweater is in fact called a jumper.

Then, on a blustery day, when I announced that I had forgotten my windbreaker, he chuckled and said that a windbreaker in Britain is someone who suffers from flatulence (and thus might require the loo?). In proper English, my nylon jacket is called a wind cheater.

Most recently, he responded to my purse blog with a more ominous tale of linguistic misinterpretation.

"In the English-speaking world, what you call a purse, we call a handbag," he wrote via email. "A purse is a wallet-like thing in which notes (bills), credit cards, and (more rarely these days) coins are kept. Women keep their purses in their handbags."

He then recounted a story about a New Zealand woman who was held-up at gunpoint in Gotham by a man who demanded that she hand over her purse. She opened her handbag and frantically rummaged around in it for her purse.

"Gimme your f**n purse!" the mugger screamed.

"I'm looking for it," she screamed back.

The thief then snatched her handbag and ran off with it, "leaving it to observers and later the cops to explain to the woman that she was very lucky that this linguistic misunderstanding hadn't got her shot," wrote Nigel, "for it's likely that the thief would have thought she was rummaging in her purse for a gun and not that she was searching for her purse in her handbag!"

Imagine if the thief had demanded her windbreaker.

Purses

I need a new purse. My current bag is an over-the-shoulder or strap-in-your-hand hybrid, and it doesn’t do either well. So I tend to leave it flopped on the floor wherever I go, and something invariably falls out of its outside pocket. Like the car keys.

But to buy a new purse is to condone this particular accessory. And I don’t. I don’t even like the name. Never have. You can’t say purse without squinching up your lips. Purse. It rhymes with terse. A purse is what a crotchety old woman carries looped over her arm, held tight. Like a weapon. Or a suitcase-sized satchel hauled about by a harried mother who needs to have at her immediate disposal any number of items: tissues, pens, a sweater, mirror and comb, three shades of lipstick, a daily planner from 2005, a dented half-drunk water bottle, and a three-course meal complete with silverware.

I do not want to be either of these women. I want to be footloose and purse-free, able to shove my driver’s license, credit card, and $20 in one pocket and chapstick in the other and walk out the door.

To carry more implies that others depend on me: “Don’t look at me! Carry your own damn Kleenex.”

And to carry a handbag looped over one arm ties up that arm from useful activity. Ever tried steering a bike with a bag dangling from your arm?

My purse-carrying days began slow and grudgingly. In my 30s, I purchased a fanny pack and stuffed it with my wallet, chapstick, and a checkbook, Post-It notepad and a pen. Then I found a cute canvas over-the-shoulder carpet-bag-looking tote at a funky store in Ouray, Colorado, and decided it looked more dignified. I put in it the contents of my fanny pack, plus a newly acquired cellphone and Palm Pilot.

And then I had a child.

My purse became an Eagle Creek backpack-slash-diaper-bag. We could have survived for a week on a deserted island with what was stored in that bag, and probably for two weeks if you didn’t mind pinching cracker crumbs from the seams.

Now that Sam is almost 8, I’m back down to a normal-sized purse. I bought a leather Coach backpack-style version a few years ago, thinking that the leather and the designer name would give the illusion of respectability.

But it soon became spattered with milk (from baby bottles smuggled into movie theaters and restaurants) and required too much maneuvering in winter to get it over both shoulders while wearing a Parka. So I ditched it for the over-the-shoulder or strap-in-your-hand model. I purchased it for too much money from Title IX Sports, the athletic-mom outfitter. In my mind this made it less of a purse and more of a “lifestyle accessory.”

But it too is proving annoying. And I am forced to realize that I am the dispenser of Kleenex and Purell, money and gum, chapstick and cough drops. And when my cellphone rings, I need to be able to find it. What if it’s the school nurse calling? Or the police?

Perhaps I just need to give my handbag a new name. Like Seinfeld, I’m not carrying a purse. I’ve got a “European Carry-All.”

And with it slung over my shoulder, I’ll pretend I’m walking the Champs Elysees in Paris.

“Vous faire a besoin d’un tissue, ma petite enfant?”