RAIN, ROBOTS AND TOTEM POLES

A terrible thing happened while I was out garaging on Saturday.

I had to put the top up on my car.

Yes, my friends, it rained. Practically unheard of here in June, and certainly unwelcome on Saturday morning! Weather was fine when I started out, then it began to mist, but I took that for the normal ‘marine layer’ we see a lot of. But the mist was having such a good time it got more enthusiastic until I had to concede it was more rain than mist.

So I had to raise my roof. Dang, I hate when that happens!

This is not to say I did not score. One thing in particular still has me bouncing in excitement. I found a Roomba! Yup, one of those robot vacuum cleaners.
The box was dusty, but when I got it home and unpacked it, the thing looked like it's barely been used. The extra Virtual Wall was never even unpacked. I plugged in the charger and fed it for several hours, then tried it out. It works! It's a hoot! It sings a few notes to say hello, then starts circling and bumping and sweeping, making its way around the room. You have to clear cords and small rugs out of the way, but with bigger rugs it just rolls on and sweeps those too. The pets were agog at first.

But they quickly decided it was not dispensing food and ignored it. It's the first model that came out about seven years ago. A bit noisy, but much less than my Electrolux. It doesn’t automatically go to a docking station to recharge like the new models. But I absolutely detest vacuuming (which is obvious from the amount of pet hair you will usually find in our corners) and now I have a robot to do it for me. So I'm totally jazzed. Isn’t it funny what makes us happy?

Other than Roomba (I need a pet name for it. Any ideas?) I scored a few useful items. I found another mug to try out…
Not sure it's as large as I want, but I like the color (chocolate brown…I think I need to go make some cocoa…) and oddly enough it's a very close color match for this find:
A new pair of Crocs—and they’re Mary Janes! I know, how could I possibly need more shoes. But these will actually let me get rid of a pair of gardening clogs I've had for over 15 years. I haven’t been using them much because they’re not as comfortable as I like my shoes to be. Now I can let them go. And the Crocs are handy because when I get hot working in the yard, I like to just walk into the pool and cool off. With these I don’t even have to take them off!

And speaking of gardening, last week I bought those tee shirts to make do rags for my husband to wear on his head when he’s working in the yard. Then kept one shirt for myself. Well, we now have a lifetime supply of knit fabric to use, because I found a gray knitted jersey sheet to cut up. No picture. Just think sweatshirt gray fabric. You got it.

When I asked how much it was, the lady hollered at her daughter standing in the garage, “Hey, don’t you want to keep your top sheet?” The girl hollered back no. Lady shook her head and told me, “None of my kids will use a top sheet on their beds, just the bottom sheet and a blanket. If I put on the top sheet, they just lay on top of it." I said it's like the duvets used in Europe, they’re just being very cosmopolitan.

It was a morning for color matches. I picked up a gray waffly shirt at possibly the friendliest yard sale of the month. Their signs were terrible, almost didn’t find the sale, but the people were so filled with happiness over arranging their castoffs and talking to strangers on their driveway that I kind of wanted to hang out for a while.
My last find is for a colleague at work. She asked me months ago to keep an eye out for a denim skirt for her. Which naturally meant that all denim skirts were immediately taken off the yard sale market; haven’t seen one for ages. Then this one appeared.
It's a Calvin Klein. I think it's about her size, and I figure the wrap styling will let her adjust if needed.

My total outlay was $27.75. Pretty good for a morning that included a working robot!

Favorite comment of the day: I was chatting with three or four folks at their sale about how heavy the mist was getting, and they noticed a car slowing down to ogle their sale. Then the car turned around and came by again, which they thought was both funny and peculiar. “Why don’t they just get out and come look?” one of them said. I ventured that sometimes people are looking for something specific, like furniture. One of the ladies nodded in agreement. “Oh yes, or totem poles.”

Totem poles! If I were looking for totem poles on driveways in Southern California, I would probably assume I could see them from the car. Yup, makes perfect sense.