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Busy, I tell you. I can make with the busy like nobody else you know. Case in point, I went to a garage sale during a recent visit to Buffalo, and I ended up with the kind of finds that make my heart sing even as I anticipated my own upcoming sale. Like, a Shafford ceramic poodle for a dollar, so lovely in Josephine's room:
And, there were flea-market finds (Because in my vernacular, flea market finds are different than garage sale finds - it's like eating pre-chewed food, to attempt a differentiation.) like these:
For me, the kind of vintage Polish wooden peg dolls I've been lusting after on other crafty blogs:
A little something for Steve's basement lair:
(After Irving Klaw's bondage photos, Bunny Yeager was best known as one of Bettie Page's best pin-up photographers, and was a pin-up herself!)
(Not because strip-tease is great home entertainment chez Colgate) (normally...)
For me er...Josie...er...the whole family:
For me er...Josie...er...the whole family:
(We're Marguerite Henry fans around here lately, but holy awesome dog illustrations in this one!)
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I also tend to end up with things that other people, sane people, would walk away from without a backward glance. Buying four tins of buttons for three dollars just because I could, and because I wanted maybe four buttons from those three tins, meant that on a lovely summer Sunday not too long ago, I spent between three and four hours sorting them. It was good for my soul, flipping them into various bins, making determinations about where they'd go by colour and by quality. Running my fingers through them, hearing and feeling the difference between plastic, mother of pearl, bakelite, gutta percha, vulcanite, bone and glass - it's like jazz. Finding vintage Chanel buttons, and WWII army shirt buttons, and looking at the sheen on a fine mother of pearl disc...
But one had to get through the pins and the other bits to get to the buttons too. The tins started out looking rather like this:
And then it was separating the wheat from the chaff. At one point, the buttons were all tidy, and then came the fussy part.
Pins to the left, needles to the right, hooks and eyes and safety pins and odds and ends...everything has a place. Nothing is garbage, really.
At the end of it all, there remains more to keep me busy.
An assortment, items ranging from an old political hand-out, to marbles, to strange needles, a pumice to sharpen my needles with, lamp finials, a Victorian engraved coin and a vintage dog license on the back of a St. Anthony's medal, a turquoise enamelled pencil lead case...
The pleasure of sorting it all, and of finding these treasures, all for only three dollars. I have much more enjoyment ahead of me yet, deciding where it all goes and trying to understand the values.
Further, in there, I found something, finally, for one of my favourite websites, Faces in Places:
Though one of the best parts of sorting through it all was recalling something that's always been a favourite mystery of mine. It's a story unto itself:
When I was young, around the age I'd have been in third or fourth grade, I often read my Dad's magazines, where he kept them - in the bathroom. I was tantalized by some of the stories in Outdoor Life, especially the graphically illustrated stories in "This Happened to Me". That may have been when I first loved that medium, and lingering in privacy and leisure in the room with the most tile as well; and I think I've just found a Christmas present for my Dad since Googling that. Bonus: I can read it in their bathroom when I visit, I'm sure. He had other magazines in there too back then, dusty and curly-paged. There were often ones about collecting coins, and for all the time I spent enjoying these vaguely illicit adult articles in the sporting magazines, only one story, about some coins, remained in my conscience since - slightly vague, yet clearly there. The attacks from bears and deer and guys being washed down turbulent rivers all blur - but one thing shines like...like...a copper penny.
I remember reading about how long ago, a man carved drawers in the sides of six pennies. A feat of some renown at the time, they were considered rare and valuable. He left them on his dresser, and his young daughter found them, and spent them. If they were ever found again, they'd be incredibly valuable.
I loved that - I still do. That's exactly what would happen in our family. Josephine would spend them buying a plastic deer or a popsicle or magic beans... But in years past, I loved having this legend too obscure for Snopes, this Last Unicorn to hunt for.
From time to time, if I found an old penny, I'd check the sides of it. I've handled money in nearly every job I've ever worked, and on slow days, I'd check them all. Over thirty years of checking pennies - I doubted my memory sometimes, and my sanity. I've Googled the story over the years too. It's my Bigfoot, it's my Holy Grail. And when I came across the pennies in with the buttons, some of them from the thirties, I tried again. I found nothing there, but I was happy to be reminded of the story, and thought it was time to check the Internets again.
And found the first something since then that tells me I'm not crazy (in this respect). Nothing further despite every attempt, but something, from a blog I quite like, an image of a 1937 penny with a drawer in it.
I'm both elated and miserable that I have confirmation that they exist. They exist! And I cannot not continue to search the sides pennies in case I might find one of my own. This is the kind of busy I create for myself.
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The reason for such sorting is twofold. First, I blame momentum and inertia. While there's pretty much always some sort of downsizing/decluttering action taking place around here, I was on a mission to find some papers that were hidden in my footlocker. That started the ball rolling.
This is the bin where I keep my history, my mementos, my relics. Just one big bunch of Marla's past in a knee-high box with really sharp corners (my shin told me to add that part).
In there, the photos - old me, old pets, old Steve and old Josie. Firsts and lasts. Once upon a times, and "this was me".And the things I like having, just because they're neat.
The things I can justify, for reasons such that having the original Tiffany & Co. packaging from my jewellery will increase their eventual estate value exponentially. The things I can't claim to really need, like an old Davy Crockett bandana, will go (went). The scores, flea market and yard sale finds that will put Josie through college (or buy her first "real" guitar), like the 1956 Elvis Presley charm bracelet in the original packaging with the old Woolworth's sticker on it will stay. The love letters? To be sorted into "safe" and "NSFJosie to find someday".
And then I got to the bottom.
The wraps from when I used to box, my Hank Williams Jr. pill box, an odd rose petal and some beautiful kid gloves. So many things to find places for. But it's good to do it.
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In doing all this, we did take time to stop and smell the flowers.
And to eat them.
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And then there were Victoria Day celebrations in there somewhere, sparklers etc. We can be glad we found out that there were/are no surprisingly flammable compounds lurking under the boards of our deck after Josie dropped a sparkler down there.
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There have been some proud moments at school (click to embiggen this image, or any of these images):
Steve, and his bass, couldn't be more chuffed.
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Josephine is also being, well, a kid. Here is a typical kid thing that would put me in traction, yet for her it's a fine posture to assume for a good fifteen to twenty minutes:
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Some things, with all the sorting, ended up in a yard sale held last weekend.
I let go of a lot, and welcomed many things back when they didn't sell. After all, I liked it in the first place, didn't I? I like having things like this for even a few weeks:
But it's good to let it go too, especially to a helpful friend - somebody else who likes a useful item like this, but who also thinks that putting a cat, a coffee mill and corn on something is just bizarre enough to make it special. As I've said - I think of thrifting as a "catch and release" program.
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Josie had her first lemonade stand during the sale.
She employed a very pro-active method of selling - handing people a cup and then telling them that they owed her ten cents. Bravo, Jo.******************
Any of her toys that were sold, some perhaps even before she woke up and came downstairs, I say "Good Riddance!" to. You want to know why? Because for a week she's been playing with the dollar-store net tent for covering picnic food and a balloon. She made up the game of keeping the balloon in the air with it herself, and it's kept her busy for much longer than any fake toy stovetop ever did. It would be wise for me to remember that the next time I'm fondling stuff at tony toy stores.
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It would also be wise for me to remember not to stay up until 2:30 in the morning before a yard sale when I'm slated to attend the Burlesque Ball that evening. So, while stripper music isn't usually in heavy rotation around here, lately there's been a little extra bump in the old grind. Steve's band played, supporting a few acts. Humour! Supporting! Because there were boobies everywhere.
The Can Can number was great fun. There's nothing not to like about the Can Can:
Amongst other classic acts, there was one with a very large snake, and there was "Hot Toddy" and his butt pasties...all fun, all good.
Even the guy peeling to "the Lonely Goatherd" was pretty nifty:
And then his goats showed up:
...and while there were some fantastic acts...
...there came a point when I'd seen too much jiggling flesh, too many pasties, and enough of one particular winkie. I had to leave. I was tired; and quite honestly, not one bit curious about how anyone else was going to take their clothes off.
**************************I arrived home, and learned...
"enh enh enrh"...why we need to get new strapping for the downspout.
********************************
In other balloon notes (Remember the balloon? Up there a little?): Balloons are the thing. For the record, I hate balloons. My personal opinion is that they are the most useless, environmentally unfriendly little poofs of possible shock and tears and disappointment that exist on this planet. I just don't like them - they're inflated eventual heartache for kids. There's never a good ending when it comes to balloons, either floating away or popping or withering, and every single time I have to tell Josie "That's just how balloons are, kiddo." No coddling there from me - no sympathetic commiserating "Oh, honey! It made you sad when the balloon floated into the sky!" and no "It's scary when balloons pop and make loud noises, isn't it?". Nope, with me it's all "Toughen up - that is why balloons are a stupid waste." For this reason, they are primarily a birthday treat at our house - but Papa Glen bought Josie a book about balloon animals with a pump and balloons. Mostly we made "water moccasin" balloon animals:
Though I can now twist a pretty mean balloon "deer" in less than a minute, and yes I will do this at your party:
And really, you cannot blow up very long balloons without making lots of porny jokes, so we kind of did. As much as you can around a kid.
*****************
But they just happen. In yet another feat of four-year-old flexibility, earlier tonight Josephine grasped an empty balloon between the toes of each foot, spread her legs, and began boinging the stretchy, rubbery band. Steve, who was sitting next to her trying to get her to eat the last bites of steak from her dinner, grew inspired.
And the "meat slingshot" was invented.
It's fine to have wads of overcooked steak flying around, when you have a sniffer dog...
...who isn't a doofus...
...but I think she got them all, eventually, with my help.
Josephine and Steve fired off several rounds, with much giggling and plenty of aiming the meat wads at me. But, for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. So you can't be snorting and giggling at one end without a little expulsion or two from the other end; and because she's four, the farts became the funniest thing ever, and Steve had to tell Josie "If you're going to fart, we're not going to do the meat slingshot." I wouldn't be surprised if that line gets some more use around this household.
**********************
The kind of busy I make myself is such that I can spend too many hours reading the TWOP forums for "I Know My Kid's a Star" yesterday after catching one episode in a feverish haze while suffering mightily from some horrible cold - and the next day I'll decide that after a month and a half of owning the material, it's time to sew the curtains for the basement. The planets must have aligned or something.
Bless Bend the Rules Sewing for telling me to get extra wide twill tape -- that saved me hours of fiddling with making tabs.
Then, after we ran to two different stores to get the twill tape, and I finished the curtains, I realized that I'd bought curtain rings with clips on them, and squirreled them away somewhere some time ago. That's why I have to stay on top of the cluttery business. Oh, me.
*******************************
Did I mention snakes up there? I did. Twice. Here's Machiavelli, out for some exercise before his din din yesterday.
And then he ate it, and now we won't see him for a few days while he digests it. No need to point out where shots from a meat slingshot land to that little guy.
********************************
I'm also busy busy busy doing laundry, and researching Roadside America-type sites like crazy, getting ready for our vacation. Another stop at our favourite little place in Philly has been planned:
amongst other fun venues on the way to Chincoteague, for the Pony Swim. It's Josie's dream come true...not mine. I swear. But that's why we're on the Marguerite Henry kick.
********************
Too much rain this past weekend means my Astilbe is leaning over too far. It looks kind of funny this way.
*********************
And next-to-lastly, tonight we decided that Josie could watch Grease, because most of the naughty bits would go right over her head, and she'd love the songs. It's been a year or two since I've watched it, and even then it was probably only in snatches. You know how you see different things on repeat viewings of favourite movies? Well tonight, it was great as usual, but I kept noticing how everyone had great naturally coloured toothy smiles. But really, there wasn't time for noticing that even. Josie was dancing like crazy, in that "up too late because it's summer" kid way. I watched her more than I watched the movie, actually.
I've got a kid that looks like Sandy, and dances like Rizzo.
****************************
You spill bubble potion on a mesh metal table, and this is what you get:
This was just before I bent over it, and tried hard to blow bubbles through it, with unsuccessful results. Caught in the act, it was hard to explain to the husband, who dismissed it with his impression of me:
(floaty voice) "There's beauty everywhere!"
********************************
In other balloon notes (Remember the balloon? Up there a little?): Balloons are the thing. For the record, I hate balloons. My personal opinion is that they are the most useless, environmentally unfriendly little poofs of possible shock and tears and disappointment that exist on this planet. I just don't like them - they're inflated eventual heartache for kids. There's never a good ending when it comes to balloons, either floating away or popping or withering, and every single time I have to tell Josie "That's just how balloons are, kiddo." No coddling there from me - no sympathetic commiserating "Oh, honey! It made you sad when the balloon floated into the sky!" and no "It's scary when balloons pop and make loud noises, isn't it?". Nope, with me it's all "Toughen up - that is why balloons are a stupid waste." For this reason, they are primarily a birthday treat at our house - but Papa Glen bought Josie a book about balloon animals with a pump and balloons. Mostly we made "water moccasin" balloon animals:
Though I can now twist a pretty mean balloon "deer" in less than a minute, and yes I will do this at your party:
And really, you cannot blow up very long balloons without making lots of porny jokes, so we kind of did. As much as you can around a kid.
*****************
But they just happen. In yet another feat of four-year-old flexibility, earlier tonight Josephine grasped an empty balloon between the toes of each foot, spread her legs, and began boinging the stretchy, rubbery band. Steve, who was sitting next to her trying to get her to eat the last bites of steak from her dinner, grew inspired.
And the "meat slingshot" was invented.
It's fine to have wads of overcooked steak flying around, when you have a sniffer dog...
...who isn't a doofus...
...but I think she got them all, eventually, with my help.
Josephine and Steve fired off several rounds, with much giggling and plenty of aiming the meat wads at me. But, for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. So you can't be snorting and giggling at one end without a little expulsion or two from the other end; and because she's four, the farts became the funniest thing ever, and Steve had to tell Josie "If you're going to fart, we're not going to do the meat slingshot." I wouldn't be surprised if that line gets some more use around this household.
**********************
The kind of busy I make myself is such that I can spend too many hours reading the TWOP forums for "I Know My Kid's a Star" yesterday after catching one episode in a feverish haze while suffering mightily from some horrible cold - and the next day I'll decide that after a month and a half of owning the material, it's time to sew the curtains for the basement. The planets must have aligned or something.
Bless Bend the Rules Sewing for telling me to get extra wide twill tape -- that saved me hours of fiddling with making tabs.
Then, after we ran to two different stores to get the twill tape, and I finished the curtains, I realized that I'd bought curtain rings with clips on them, and squirreled them away somewhere some time ago. That's why I have to stay on top of the cluttery business. Oh, me.
*******************************
Did I mention snakes up there? I did. Twice. Here's Machiavelli, out for some exercise before his din din yesterday.
And then he ate it, and now we won't see him for a few days while he digests it. No need to point out where shots from a meat slingshot land to that little guy.
********************************
I'm also busy busy busy doing laundry, and researching Roadside America-type sites like crazy, getting ready for our vacation. Another stop at our favourite little place in Philly has been planned:
amongst other fun venues on the way to Chincoteague, for the Pony Swim. It's Josie's dream come true...not mine. I swear. But that's why we're on the Marguerite Henry kick.
********************
Too much rain this past weekend means my Astilbe is leaning over too far. It looks kind of funny this way.
*********************
And next-to-lastly, tonight we decided that Josie could watch Grease, because most of the naughty bits would go right over her head, and she'd love the songs. It's been a year or two since I've watched it, and even then it was probably only in snatches. You know how you see different things on repeat viewings of favourite movies? Well tonight, it was great as usual, but I kept noticing how everyone had great naturally coloured toothy smiles. But really, there wasn't time for noticing that even. Josie was dancing like crazy, in that "up too late because it's summer" kid way. I watched her more than I watched the movie, actually.
I've got a kid that looks like Sandy, and dances like Rizzo.
****************************
You spill bubble potion on a mesh metal table, and this is what you get:
This was just before I bent over it, and tried hard to blow bubbles through it, with unsuccessful results. Caught in the act, it was hard to explain to the husband, who dismissed it with his impression of me:
(floaty voice) "There's beauty everywhere!"
