HARPS AND MUSIC

“I bet you’re really happy it’s not raining,” called the woman hauling yard sale stuff onto her driveway as she looked at my open convertible.

“I bet you’re happy too!” I told her.

We had this conversation because earlier it had been pouring. We compared our dismay when we heard the rain at about 5:30 this morning. But by a little after 7:00 the rain had blown away, so we both went into action. By the time I reached her house I’d stopped at about four sales and figured the day was over. Hadn’t found a thing. But there on her table was one of the things on my list to look for.The lucite lamp I bought back in Julyhad a wobbly shade, which turned out to be because it had no lamp harp. So I’ve been looking for one ever since. Kept thinking I’d find a fifty cent lamp I could steal the harp from, but this is even better. So hopefully I’ll have a working lamp soon, and I can have fun playing with a shade.

It’s been a rather lamp-y weekend. My husband wants to rewire the funny atomic-era lamps we bought recently, and while he’s at it figured he would do the floor lamp we got last year at the world’s junkiest estate sale. This one needed some parts that weren’t at Home Depot, so we stopped in at a rather cool lighting store. Which is moving, so a lot of pieces are marked down. We fell in love with some sconces for the retirement house to replace the truly awful Southwestern-style pieces that are there. (If you love that style, my apologies, no offense intended. It’s just that they look ridiculous in a Midcentury Modern house. Stop by after we move in and we’ll give them to you.) So we went ahead and bought the sconces.Hard to tell from my picture—it’s a half-round of ribbed glass within a wrought iron frame. Buying things for a house I can’t go live in for a while yet makes me feel like a Victorian maiden with a hope chest, but hey, a sale is a sale.

The people at this place sent us somewhere else for the lamp parts, which is where we learned that the kind of shade with a big ring in the frame is called an uno shade. I love learning stuff like this. It’s why research is so much fun—you get hold of one fact (uno shade) and it leads you to the next (our lamp is a bridge lamp).

But back to our regularly scheduled programming…yard sales. The nice folks with the lamp harp are readers so we talked books for a while (after I declined to let them put boxes of them in my car for me). Then their cat strolled out. This is Klondike, who is about fifteen years old. Turn out, he came with their house. The previous owners simply abandoned him. He is reportedly quite the chowhound.

I figured that was it for the day, but close to home I stopped at an estate sale where I picked up some CDs. It was the first time I’ve ever been checking CDs at a sale and found something by someone I know. They had two  by Brother Yusef, a terrific local blues singer who sometimes does shows for kids at libraries. He performs regularly at Downtown Disney; don’t miss him if you’re in the area!

So that was this week’s adventure. Two bucks, some stuff I can use, and a handsome kitty. It was good.