Gale-Force Winds of Change are Blowing!

I broke the news at work this week that I am going to retire.

Next month!

I vacillate at least hourly between excitement and terror. Oh boy, I get to go live in my MCM house in Oregon now! Eeeek, will we be able to make ends meet?! And on and on. But when you decide to make a huge change in your life, you have to accept that all the ducks will never line up beforehand. You just jump in and work things out as you go.

Sounds wise, yes? Which is why I was able to pass up this item at a yard sale this morning. Figured I have sufficient wisdom already.

Right now yard sales feel like an ocean of stability in my life. Safe, predictable, comforting.

Inexpensive! I spent a total of $2.60 this morning. Probably the best deal was ten cents for 8 Georgia O’Keeffe cards.

They were at a semi-crazed sale with a ton of stuff belonging to three different women. Every time anyone asked how much something was, one of them would say it belonged to someone else and start hollering for whoever. I’m glad the only thing I found that I wanted was a simple buy that only required one holler for a price.

Bought some white things. A trio of canvas boards for an artist friend from some twenty-somethings. One of the young ladies told me rather grandly that it was the first sale they had had in twenty years. I refrained from telling her that few preschoolers hold yard sales, which is what she much have been twenty years ago.

This roll of white Con-tac paper will come in handy at the new house.

Couldn’t grab it fast enough when I saw that it is repositionable. If you’re old enough to remember the stickum that used to be on this stuff you know what I’m talking about. It must have given them idea for Super Glue. Man, that stuff could stick – and woe betide you if you got a wrinkle in it or it stuck to itself!

A couple of driveways up the street I met little Lucy at another sale.

Isn’t that a wonderfully goofy face? I think she thought the camera might be food. Not so Riley the Pomeranian; he was having nothing to do with a camera.

I missed a good shot at another sale, perhaps because there was no dog involved so I didn’t think about grabbing my camera until it was too late. A family visiting from Norway was being taken to yard sales by their host and were having a wonderful time shopping. Evidently the host agrees with me that they could have no experience more quintessentially American. The teenage daughter found a pink feather boa, and they asked the lady having the sale to take their picture. Then they had someone else take a picture of them with the sale lady.

My last buy came with a terrific story.

As I paid the young woman having that sale, she smiled when she saw what I had and said, “I went to that movie on my first date.”  This is the kind of remark that makes my heart go pitty pat. “Your first date ever?” I asked. She nodded. “The very first. I went to this movie with Tim Dufor, and we went across the street for ice cream afterward. My mom took us, and his grandma picked us up. Then he spent the rest of the summer coming to all my baseball games and watched them with my mom.”

I asked if she was still in touch with him, but no. “I knew him all the way through high school and he just got handsomer and handsomer. But after that we lost touch.”

I think I’m going to keep an eye out for good looking guys of the right age named Tim. If I find one, I’ll see if he remembers On Golden Pond.