true happiness

Jeanne Lottie is not the name of a designer. In Chinese, the words that sound a bit like “Jeanne Lottie” (or Jun Lok Tai) mean “True Happiness”. Jane Ip’s the owner and designer of Jeanne Lottie products and she has some very nice pieces. If you’re in Toronto you can visit her Yorkville location. Her wares are also available across North America.

I owned a Jeanne Lottie purse until a little after noon on Thursday.

The precise time my purse was stolen by a scum bucket thief (Note: I don’t use expletives in my blog but I do live and in person — scum bucket didn’t even make the short list of phrases I used) is unknown. No one saw the actual grab take place. My friends think it may have been the woman who breezed in to grab a takeout menu. No one else walked by our table.

I hope she does not have a moment of true happiness for some time.

I don’t wish her any physical harm (jail is fine) and I hope she was starving and needed the money for food. But I doubt it. She didn’t rack up over $2000 on my cards in an hour at Sobey’s.

It’s not the money that hurts the most — it wasn’t that much, really.

It’s the invasion and incredible inconvenience! Canceling my cards was an ordeal in itself. But they will send me new cards and I’m protected from the spree of purchases. The biggest pain (besides spending a few hours visiting various government offices) relates to what can’t be replaced that easily.

Missing — and probably in landfill by now is:

• Glasses: I’ll have to wear my back-up mid-90s pair for the time being! How enchanting that’ll be.
• Palm Pilot: I have not been without a PDA for years.
• Quite a few hearing aid batteries: They’re not cheap and given my desire to hear people talking to me, I go through a lot.
• Keys: I had to change my locks.
• And other things one might have in a purse such as lip cream, gum, candy, business cards, make-up bag and such: This is not as hard to replace but it’s a pain nonetheless not to have one’s essentials on hand.

I’m tempted to say that it could’ve been worse. My luncheon companions and I were unhurt. Yeah, yeah, yeah…all true but I’m still very annoyed.

From now on I plan to secure my purse to my person whenever I may be distracted, such as in a restaurant. This should do it:

Okay, that wire contraption may be too much…so perhaps this little device will do the trick:

Or else, I’ll do what the kind cop who took the report advised — “travel with the bare minimum that you need and never let go of your purse in a restaurant”.

Never let go, eh? I think I’ll buy that lock.