I admit it, I have a problem with shoes

I have a different bag for all of my regular activities - a red knapsack for going to the gym, a grey knapsack for Irish Dancing (even though I don't do that anymore), a black knapsack for boxing, and a black bag with leopard and cheetah prints and a tiger on it for Sparks.

My Sparks bag is the same bag I used when I used to be a leader with Guides, which is the branch of Girl Guides for 9-12 year old girls. If I remember correctly, I quit in 2004.

That would be almost six years ago.

When I started doing Sparks, I grabbed the same bag, since it already had the essential - cheap runners for in the gym, a pencil case with pens, glue, a stapler, and scissors, and a small notebook for planning.

When I first pulled the shoes out of the bag, I had to laugh - they were old, cracked, and had splotches of yellow paint on them from fish stenciling*. Clearly, it's a good thing I kept them for the 4 years I wasn't a leader.

Making it even funnier was the fact that I had another pair of identical (except, you know, new) runners in the closet that I had probably bought knowing those ones would soon be tossed out.

Just to be clear, I started being a Sparks leader a year and a half ago.

Yesterday, I swapped the shoes and threw out the old ones.

I also took everything out of the bag and vacuumed the bag out. Somehow, a plastic bag that I'd had in there got completely destroyed (i.e. basically, it was clingy confetti) and the pieces were getting on my nerves. (Whatever happened to the bag happened recently - this hasn't been a problem for 6 years.)

Anyway, my bag is now cleaned out and ready to use.

* Fish stenciling - painting yellow fish by the storm drains to remind people that any water washed into the storm drains goes straight into the river without being treated.