Well, THAT Was Intense

I've pretty much been grading, teaching, or working from 6 am until midnight for the past week. I've lost both my voice and my temper but have gained 4 lbs. None of these is good.

I'll spare you all the various things I could whine about and share instead two fun junking finds. The first was from a few weeks ago, this wonderful wooden container I found at a junk store on one of my rock star expeditions:


It's got a screw top and is of a very finely grained wood. Clearly it was designed to hold something tall like a small bottle, but I've no idea what. I love it though. Sherman's paw should give you an idea of the size. He's a big cat, but he's still cat-sized, not a mastiff or anything.

The second find is a tale of good junking karma.

I had gone to the What's On Watson festival this Sunday, mainly to try the restaurant samples, and discovered the Baptist church was having a rummage sale in the basement. At this point (noon), they said more than half of the items were gone. I picked up a bundle of kitchen towels for 75 cents and wandered about to see if there was anything else I wanted. Nope.

At the checkout line, the woman in front of me put down a plastic canvas needle point place mat (25 cents), a Christmas decoration (50 cents), a purple wool coat (10.00), and two other items costing less than a dollar. The cashiers personified the little old church lady stereotype. One would read out the price and the other would do the math.

Little old lady A: Let's see. That's 25 plus 50 is 75, plus 1.00 is 1.75, plus 50 plus 30 is 2.55.

Little old lady B: Your total is 2.55.

Me (in my head): Is the customer going to correct them? She's got to know that it's 10.00, not 1.00. Isn't she going to say anything? Should I say something?

I waged a quick little internal war. Leaving aside the amount of labor and materials that went into making a "Happy Easter" plastic canvas place mat and then selling it for 25 cents, this money was to be for the church. I'm not a churchy sort, especially a Baptisty one, but it's their fundraiser, and their 9.00. The coat was 10.00, not 1.00. They could buy a lot with 9.00, I thought. Plus they were cute little old ladies. Who takes advantage of the addlepated?

Me (very much out loud): Wow! Is that coat really only 10.00?!!!! What a deal!!!!

Cue the pandemonium. I paid my 75 cents and scooted out of there, the little old ladies apologizing profusely for their adding error to customer. Why apologize? Because they're cute little old ladies, of course.

As for the karmic part, about 30 minutes later I looked down at my towels, plain old white huck towels with a blue stripe and noticed that two of the center ones seemed to have words woven into the blue stripe. I peeled back the masking tape binding the bundle and saw this:
Maybe the junking gods are Baptist after all.