I think we’ve established Lord Dudley Mountcatten is not your average rough and tumble feline. For a cat we rescued from a shelter… who had been found as a stray wandering the streets, he’s quickly adapted to the finer comforts life at Casa River provides. And while he loves to go outside in fair weather? The winter walkies are proving troublesome.
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There are shoveled paths all around the house, garage and barn but this furry numbskull plows through the snow instead. And when he does? He shakes and shivers and mewls pitifully.
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Which means my husband (the man with an infinite amount of patience for the cat but not his wife) has to pick up his Lordship and deliver him upon a path.
Mainers. We’re known for being down to earth no nonsense folk. Frugal? You betcha. So with gas prices on the rise? I wouldn’t be surprised to see more of this alternative form of transportation my friend photographed at the beach the other day.
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It may be slower, but it’s certainly green.
Now how fun is this? Real life Dr. Seuss furniture!
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There was big news in my town today.
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Moxie is back! Introduced in 1876 and still going strong, it’s an acquired taste you either love or hate. Think bitter herbal medicine meets Coca Cola. As the old saying goes, it will put hair on your chest.
My husband has a weakness for health food stores. Does he eat healthy? Not unless I force him, but he loves to stroll the weird item laden aisles all the same.
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Whipped cream or whipped rice? That’s a no brainer for me, but I suppose someone might buy that sorry excuse of a substitute.
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I really wanted to buy this bizarre looking fruit… But the husband balked at the price. Good grief, it’s named after a hand.
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If that isn’t worth a little extra scratch I don’t know what is.
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He’ll bitch about high prices but then go get a ridiculously small container of freshly churned peanut butter. Probably because he knows I won’t eat it.
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Worst waste of money that day? This cleverly marketed bag of dried fruit. I love kiwi, so I bought it.
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They weren’t lying, it’s ugly. And completely unpeeled. Who the hell wants to eat that!
After a verrrrry long day at the antique mall from Hell my husband came home with relatively little in the way of treasure.
I was all for buying an antique wall phone to hang in the man cave and a vintage steamer trunk to use as a coffee table, but no. He wanted none of that.
His final purchases?
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An old wooden egg crate. Do we have egg laying chickens? No.
Moving on…
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The seven pieces of ephemera it took him two and a half hours to find.
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Did we need this classically decorated snake oil salesman’s card that claims to cure cholera?
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I think not, but we own it anyway.
Since my barn phone and steamer trunk were vetoed, I only came home with a handful of vinyl.
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Though one of my selections has a specific purpose.
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My husband went to Woodstock. The largest, greatest rock and roll event in history… he was there on day one.
For about half an hour. He walked around, didn’t like what he saw, and left. (If I had known this before we got married, it would have been a deal breaker.)
So because he turned his back on that once in a lifetime experience …. and kept me in that often cold and dark chicken barn antique mall all damned day…. I bought the original Woodstock album and will force him to listen to it. Over and over again, while I slaughter him in Scrabble.
Onward… through the never ending stalls of useless crap timeless treasure we went.
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Box of 1950’s risqué playing cards?
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Check! There were two.
Vintage hi fi speakers?
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Check! Two as well.
Absurd 6 legged patriotic corner table?
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Yup. That was there as well.
Because I don’t spend nearly as much time examining the junk unique items on sale as the husband, I’m always far ahead of him in the store. So when I see an area I think might be trouble?
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Like an entire room of rust…
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I try to steer him clear. But this time he surprised me and passed by the tool stall of horrors with nary a glance. We were halfway through the store by this time and I was lulled into a false sense of security that we would exit before dark.
And then….
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He found a pile. Actually he found pile upon piles of ephemera. For the uninitiated pickers among us, an explanation.
Ephemera – items of collectible memorabilia, typically written or printed ones, that were originally expected to have only short-term usefulness or popularity.
There were boxes stacked on boxes, files stuffed in drawers and a floor to ceiling shelf full of ABSOLUTELY nothing worth a damn. But this didn’t deter my husband, oh no. The more he looked and found nothing? The more he was sure there was something. He just knew an undiscovered copy of the constitution or Abraham Lincoln’s handwritten will was waiting to be unearthed .
I walked the entire mall three times, sat down and blogged for half an hour, chatted with other customers and read two old Life magazines. He still wasn’t done.
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I found old shoes that made my bunion hurt just looking at them.
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And World War II German mountain trooper boots I wouldn’t want to hike the Alps in…. but still, the husband wasn’t through.
After 2 hours and 38 minutes…. ( That’s how long he stood there sorting and sifting through stinky brittle old scraps of paper. Yes. I timed it. ) I pulled him away and gave him an ultimatum. He could finish browsing the store before it closed or I was taking the car and leaving him there.
Since it was a 65 mile walk home? He deserted his giant pile of vintage grocery store lists and life insurance policies and resumed browsing.
To be continued….
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Where there's only one step from the sublime to the ridiculous.
River's world..... 