My little first world problem…

Or, “Now I know how a lady in a shoe store feels.”

(This unexpectedly turned into a wall of words, which I haven’t done in quite a while. Tobie is giving me That Look, so we have to go outside now but I’m going to hit Publish first before I lose my nerve. I’ll clean up the editing when we get back.)

Long-time readers know that here at the Secret Lair we have traditionally had a money problem – known as “Don’t got none.” Improvise, scrounge or do without is pretty much the whole point of the exercise and has been since I arrived in the Gulch 19 years ago. And mostly I got by fairly well for the first ten years or so of doing that, living on neighborhood gigs. I talked a lot about ‘synchronicity,’ the phenomenon of necessary things just kind of showing up when I needed them. There were some times when I barely squeaked by but for the most part it was kind of fun.

Then about nine years ago that started to fall apart for me. Some key neighbors moved away, leaving me high and dry for labor and maintenance gigs. I had a few bad moments, to be honest: Would I have to move to some inhabited place and (shudder) get a job? Could I even get a job, at this point in my life, that would cover living expenses? Out here I could live cheap, albeit in a state where one serious Jeep breakdown or health problem might sink me.

Right about then Big Brother started bailing me out with monthly care packages, which allowed me to continue as I had been, and that went on for another nine years or so. Blog readers were a huge help during that period as necessary cabin improvements got done largely on contributions. Life got more comfortable, but I wasn’t making frivolous purchases.

About a year ago, after I turned 70, I went on SS and the money problem largely went away. I wasn’t buying that custom 4X4 supertruck, but I could improve my infrastructure without pain and if I wanted to replace a worn-out tool with something better I did that with increasing casualness. Still, the concept of buying something I didn’t need just because I wanted it had long since become a foreign thing indeed.

Also about a year ago, quite coincidentally, my friend Ian gave me a princely birthday present. I’d been thinking for quite some time of swapping my daily .44 revolver for a modern 9mm, for reasons, and he laid one upon me. Nothing super expensive but it was just what I’d been wanting, and of course it raised a whole bunch of new expenses. First thing I needed was a holster before I could use it at all. The Arex has one slight disadvantage: It’s kind of a hipster brand and accessories aren’t available on every gunstore wall. I found a quicky on Amazon, to my surprise…

…pretty cheap. I expected it to be a stopgap but actually it worked out quite well. Wasn’t ever going to be my very favorite thing, because I wanted a drop holster for everyday, but for a highrise holster it isn’t bad and I’ve been using it for over a year any time I need a modicum of concealment.

A regular reader told me about a nice custom kydex company that would make a drop holster for the Arex, and I didn’t hesitate…

Not at all cheap, but that’s a damn nice holster. I’ve been carrying it for over a year and it’s great. It’s got enough drop and standoff for comfortable drawing and any time I’m outdoors in the Gulch, or am likely to be, that’s what I wear. So my holster needs are met. Problem solved, end of story.

Right? No. Because recently materialism raised its ugly head.

A couple of weeks ago I did something I probably shouldn’t have done. I went back on the Legacy Firearms Co site and shopped for a fancier highrise holster than the perfectly adequate one I already had. If I were going to buy an unnecessary fancy holster – which I definitely wasn’t – how would I want it? OD Green, of course, because it’s a concealment holster and I mostly wear OD green. I dialed in the suspension system, the sweat guard, the amount of reholstering flair, the slide length, the optic cut, the color of the standoff washers for god’s sake. Oh, look! They’ve got basketweave pattern kydex! That would be funny. It was just a game, killing time. I wasn’t going to do anything stupid like push the button…

…yeah. It arrived today.

And here’s the really dumb part: As soon as I did it, I started sweating how long the delivery would take. I got really excited about this … geegaw. Counted the days, followed the package tracking like it was a race I was betting on. People, I don’t do that. Maybe I did now and then when I was Mr. Suburban Man but that was a helluva long time ago. I told my neighbor, while recounting the story and laughing at myself, “Now I know how a lady in a shoe store feels.”

So there it is. Whadaya think?