My Most Expensive Purchase

A long time ago, I brought back to Canada a bunch of Malian merchandise. I made a blog post about it. Among my stuff, there were five Malian shirts. I put them on wire hangers and hung them on a wall in my room when I went to college. They came with me from student housing, to my holdover spot after graduating, and then to my bachelor pad where I would stay for five years. Coming to my current place, Lee-Anne thought I should have them framed, as the wire hangers were apparently tacky. So they sat in the closet for about a year, and we finally got around to visiting a framing store recently.

There's a framing place right next to where we live. We got to talk about the type of frames we want, the dimensions, the glass. I guess I'm not going to give exact numbers, but when I went to pay, Lee-Anne asked me if my card limit would cover it. I was like "My what?"

It didn't.

I've never had to think about that before, so it must have been the largest expense I've ever paid in one shot.

That can't be true. I've paid first and last rent before.  We bought a bunch of furniture last year. That must have added up to more. I guess it's different when writing a cheque, and no single item of furniture cost as much, even if it totaled more.

It was weird though, because the sinking sensation I felt didn't match the severity of when I'd made large purchases in the past. I think because even if it was my largest single purchase, it didn't effect my bank account on a percentage basis as much as, say, buying college text books did in the past. Because I have more money now.

One of the drawbacks of being financially secure is that payday is not as exciting anymore, for the same reason. It doesn't effect the percentage in my bank account as much as it used to. When you're poor, the lows are way lower, but the highs are less high. Payday doesn't change what I can immediately do anymore. My lifestyle stays the same, the numbers in my account just change a bit.

Anyway, we had to juggle payment methods but we made it work.

When it was time to pick them up, the framing lady was ecstatic about her handiwork and really talked them up. When someone else who worked there came in, she was like "Are you the guy with the shirts?!" I mean, of course they're going to build them up, it's their livelihood. But it was still nice to hear the Malian prints being praised that way, since it was such a unique and purposeful time of my life.

She made sure to stack them a certain way, and when she realized I didn't have a vehicle, she insisted she drive them to my place to ensure they were delivered safely. Even though I live just two streets over.

So I'll show you the end result of my most expensive single purchase:

You can be the judge on whether or not they live up to the hype. I'm assured that this way the material will never fade, and these will last me a lifetime.

While I'm at it, I'll share another print.

I found this one face down in the middle of a sidewalk in the rain. I flipped it over out of curiosity, saw that it was undamaged so far as I could tell and took it home. It dried off fine and yeah, appears totally unscathed. I'm the type of person that thinks life leaves little clues for you, and that getting something weird like this in an unusual context must have a "purpose". Why did it come to me? That line of logic. I kind of get that random stuff just happens a lot of the time, but that's very difficult for me to accept.

Lee-Anne thinks it looks like an apocalypse though, so I'm going to have to get rid of it. I told her I wanted to at least make a blog post about it first. So I'm documenting it hear in case it does have some kind of meaning or purpose going forward.