"What is in here?" Lamar will ask as he tries to move my bag to the floorboard of the back seat.

"Stuff I need," I reply.

My husband does not understand why I carry such a big bag.

No man understands that about any woman.

Men have the luxury of being able to just carry a wallet, keys and cell phone. How do they get away with carrying just three items while most women tote bags that weigh more than a toddler?

Usually because all of their stuff ends up in their wife's bag.

My bag weighs about 8 pounds - I know because I weighed that sucker.

But it's not just my junk, although about 80 percent of it is mine.

There's probably about 30 assorted receipts in the bottom of my bag. I'd say about a third of those have a piece of gum stuck in them, or the remnants of a lollipop from Cole. And usually, those are the very receipts I needed to save to turn in for my taxes or for reimbursement.

My makeup bag and other assorted tubes of lip-gloss floating around has to add about 2 pounds.

A full size bottle of lotion is in there - I am in love with Suave's Everlasting Sunshine scent and smelling it makes me feel like I am at the beach. There's a roll of Certs, a pack of Trident and those little dental flosser things on the stick.

I have even found a whole apple and a tub of peanut butter in the bottom of my purse before, leftovers from snacks I had thrown in for lunch on the road no doubt. I even found a spoon in there the other day.

"Why do I have a spoon in here?" I asked.

"You never know when you're gonna need to eat pudding?" Lamar asked back.

It was probably an emergency spoon for those trips through the Dairy Queen drive thru where I pull away before they can hand me plastic ware. Any mother who's made that mistake with a child in the backseat hankering for their Peanut Buster Parfait knows not to do it again.

Action figures set up camp in the pockets of my bag. And even though Lamar may roll his eyes about my behemoth bag, the first thing he does when we go somewhere is stash his wallet and keys in there.

So usually the bulk of my purse is necessities. Things that are thrown in there, just in case of some drive thru emergency or someone has dry skin. And they're all things that when we go somewhere, my husband or child wants to know I happen to have handy.

If my purse could talk, I think it would say I was prepared for just about anything - from a lipstick catastrophe to spinach being stuck between incisors.

It would declare boldly that I was a mother and wife.

And it would shout pudding. I am always ready for pudding.

Sudie Crouch is an award-winning humor columnist and certified life coach. She lives in the north Georgia mountains with her family and four insane, but fairly well behaved dogs.