I had to take Willie to The Container Store in King of Prussia.  

Now, my family — both immediate and extended — has banned me from The Container Store. 

Unless I’m taking Willie. If I’m taking Willie, I am permitted to visit The Container Store.  

Don’t tell them The Container Store is on Instacart. They’ll have Willie Instacart herself some containers and how, exactly, am I supposed to live without containers of my own? 

See, I’m married to the loveliest of guys. But if someone were to breathe life into Pig-Pen from the Peanuts comics — à la Weird Science — my husband would be Kelly LeBrock. 

Except, you know, as Pig-Pen. 

Like Pig-Pen, debris whirls around him like lettuce in a salad spinner. And the exciting thing is the Pig-Pen gene is hereditary. And dominant. Even our beagle leaves a wake of destruction everywhere he goes.  

But The Container Store? Well, The Container Store has everything you need for a household of Pig-Pens. Take the caddies and trays The Container Store sells for medicine cabinets. Aren’t caddies and trays perfect vessels for the unsanctioned stuff the Pig-Pens of my house put in our medicine cabinets? 

And the thirty-two-compartment underwear tray. I could use it to corral my husband’s drawers, which I’m sure he and I have differing definitions of, or I could use it for the — wait, counting — yep, 32 bits of flotsam and jetsam in the basket I bought to contain the car keys. 

I had to buy something else to contain the car keys. 

And for fifteen dollars, I can buy a stone to dry out each of my Pig-Pens’ toothbrushes. I never really considered wet toothbrushes a problem. But ever since I saw that stone at The Container Store, I can’t stop thinking about the germs procreating in those wet toothbrushes.  

But the real sticking point for my family is the egg container.  

I have been told by every member of my household I can have The Container Store egg container, or I can have a family. I can’t have both. I’m like Bud Fox, aka Charlie Sheen, at the end of Wall Street — he can have morals, or he can have Daryl Hannah.  

But he can’t have both. 

It’s so pretty, that egg container. Almost as pretty as Daryl Hannah. 

It’s a clear, glittering plastic bin, with a drawer that slides out. Eighteen eggs nestle in that drawer, as perfectly aligned as teeth just out of braces. 

If I owned it, I could move the eggs to a deeper shelf in the fridge. The top shelf perhaps? The nut butters would line up perfectly on its smooth plastic top. Or maybe the bottom shelf? Yes, the bottom shelf! Wouldn’t the cartons of berries fit perfectly atop the egg container? 

Unless — wait, no. The Container Store also has berry bins. Crystal clear, sparkling berry bins.  

Well. Now I feel an entire fridge reorganization coming on.  

Which would be glorious. 

On this particular visit to The Container Store, I offered to take Willie to breakfast first because, well, resisting plastic egg containers takes work. Sweat. Tears.  

And yeah. Probably some blood. 

I also had to talk to Willie about a few things. Losing Indy to Marion’s bar in Nepal has swamped me with enough paperwork to fill a 32-compartment underwear tray.  

And while I was well-acquainted with Indy and Willie’s finances before Indy went to Marion’s bar in Nepal, I am now as intimate with those finances as my perpetually wet toothbrush is with its teeming hordes of bacteria. 

So when Willie told me over breakfast that she had a million dollars for me, I was perplexed.  

I asked Willie where she had this million dollars. It sure wasn’t in any account I knew about. 

Willie smiled at me beatifically.  

Kind of like the smile John Astin wore on Night Court whenever he said, “I’m feeling much better. Now.” 

“Where do you have that money, Willie?” I asked.  

“In my heart,” Willie said. “I have that money for you in my heart.” 

“Is that like Bitcoin?” I asked.  

“I think so,” Willie said. 

I thought again of Wall Street. Willie’s heart money was just as elusive as the money Gordon Gekko dangled before Charlie Sheen.  

Is this why Gordon Gekko said money never sleeps? Surely money in Willie’s heart is awake, 24 hours a day. Who can sleep with the constant beat beat beat of Willie’s heart? 

I wondered aloud how one uses heart money. If I went into The Container Store asking for 43,497 plastic egg containers, could I tell them there’s a million dollars in Willie’s heart to pay for them all?  

Without, you know, getting arrested? 

And I can’t even think about how I go about liquidating heart money. Is it even FDIC-insured? What’s my interest rate?  

Gordon Gekko did say money isn’t lost or made. It’s just transferred.  

Like magic, he said. Money is transferred like magic. 

So maybe my million dollars in heart money doesn’t need to be insured. Maybe it can just be transferred. 

To The Container Store. For 43,497 egg containers. 

Just don’t tell my family.