SEMI NIFTY AND THAT'S GOOD ENOUGH!

I suspect a lot of us look for omens as we go through our days. If the next light is green, Bobby Jim will call me tonight—that sort of thing. I had a colleague once who told me that she believed the image on her dog-a-day calendar was an omen for what that day would be like.

I started thinking about this because I realized as I headed out this morning looking for yard sales that I've come to regard the first piece I hear on the classical radio station as an omen for the kind of morning it will be. (I never said it makes any sense!) A few Saturdays ago it was “The Tick Tock Clock” which sounded humorous. Last week it was Ravel’s “Bolero,” which I love and which strikes me as both exuberant and relentless. And yes, I can embody both those qualities on Saturday! But today nothing I heard felt like the musical omen I was looking for, and that was probably appropriate. I found some stuff to buy, but it was not a big day for stories or overheard conversations. Guess you can't have it all every week. Sometimes you get stories, sometimes you get stuff, sometimes you get both. And sometimes you get nothing—but not often enough to discourage you from going out again next Saturday!

I did speak to a few people. One was the couple whose neon green paper signs blazed the trail to their sale. I told them how great the signs were. The woman beamed and said her daughter did them. Her daughter could give lessons in the design and placement of sale sign. Even more importantly than getting me there, they also led the way back out!

At another stop I talked to a cute red-haired teenager, and he mentioned they’d had a sale the week before. Then he said something about his dad having died, and I realized this was one of the “two nineteen year old kids whose father just died and their mother is angry.” I said I was sorry about his father, and he said he’d died two years ago and they’d been dealing with probate. That story gets more cryptic all the time. Has the mother been angry for two years? She must be exhausted.

Another exhausted lady was part of a family having a humungous sale, spreading from the front yard, around the side and all across the back yard. I asked her if it was a group’s fund raiser and she said no, it had all belong to a bunch of crazy people who shopped constantly. They just bought stuff to be buying and put it in boxes and the entire house and garage and storage shed had been full. She said they’d had to go through everything because among all the stuff was actual money, and they didn’t want to just throw it away. Makes you wonder how much cash ends up in the landfill, doesn’t it? One of the other relatives told me they’d set up the sale yesterday, and she and her daughters had camped out in the yard last night to keep an eye on things. When the newspaper carrier drove by this morning she sat up to see who it was, and scared the guy half to death—he nearly ran into a parked car.

So I guess I did get a story or two after all!

Along with the story, I spent $10.50 and brought home:
Another apron-to-be.



The inevitable buttons—love the thistle design and there are eight of them.

A Curious George digital watch. I keep a supply of watch batteries on hand (found an online supplier that sells them for about forty cents each!) and wouldn’t you know that none of the six sizes in my stash are the right one? But George is reading a book on the watch face, so I've ordered yet another set of batteries. Hope that’s all it takes!


I've been wanting a container for my bathroom to put ibuprofen in (the bottle’s ugly and I get tired of childproof lids), so I got this little enameled-tin container.

Some DVDs that we either didn’t have, or to replace videotapes.

A sweater shaver. I've always wanted to try one of these—pills on sweaters annoy me. And now for fifty cents I can give it a whirl.

And this semi-nifty set of clip art on CDs.


I say semi because I managed to pick up only volume 2 of the user’s guide and visual catalog that has thumbnails of all the images. But keep your fingers crossed—I remembered where the sale was, checked on Craigslist to see if they’d advertised this morning, which they had, so I emailed them to ask if they still have volume one. Maybe I can pick it up next Saturday!