In my last entry I mentioned the new series on Chanel black jackets. But my work/travel schedule is eating me alive so it’s taking me a tad bit longer to get the photos in place, though I promise to make the series worth your wait.

As I’m unpacking from last weekend and packing for this coming week, I’m also doing a massive backup of all the files on my desktop and laptop and tablet. One of these years I’ll finally get my act together and have everything stored and triple backed up in one place somewhere in the cloud or some place here on land. My number one recurring anxiety dream–besides being back in school and forgetting my locker combination–is that I have a laptop crash while going through security at some airport with zero backup. And then I trip on something, hit my head, and get amnesia. So there goes that backup.

But what does all this have to do with the title of today’s entry, which as you know by now is reserved for my diary about the adoption of Hermès bags? Well, when I was going through the aforementioned backup, I ran across a few photos sent from my friend SL in KL from almost four years ago. Long before I made the commitment to H. The photos accompanied a frantic email from her, asking if I would want either the olive Birkin (below, right)

or shadow Birkin

being offered to her that day?

I am horrified to report to you today that my response to her back then was a nonchalant “not really me” email, even though I had told her the shadow Birkin was very much me when I saw a photo of it some time before. Fast forward some 1200 days later to my unsuccessful visit to the Hermès Ala Moana boutique last week, I could just punch myself shoot my foot scream weep … well, let’s say this is now my third recurring anxiety dream: to be offered a Birkin and passing up on it. The only problem is that this was no dream. It did happen. I was just too myopic back then to read the writing on the wall that one day the Birkin (and Kelly) would go the way of a black rhino or polar bear and make the endangered species list. Any rare glimpse would be just that, from a distance on someone else’s arm or a socialite’s Instagram selfies.

So dear readers, this segment of the road to adoption, part 4, is a cautionary tale. If a rare bag is offered to you in a color that you love and would use (grey, olive, and brown have always been favorites for me in the accessories department), do not mull it over or over-analyze it or (worst of all) dismiss it. Buy first, ask later! That is so not a socially/fiscally responsible comment there but having seen the price of H bags on the reseller market and suffering through the scarcity of finding one at retail lately, I wish I could go back in time and change my email response to three simple words: I’ll take both.

In three plus years I would have seen those bags appreciate in value at a rate higher than my stock portfolio. Most of all, I would not now still be wandering in and out of boutiques like a zombie in the (false) hope of landing another Birkin.