yard sales, sept. 19.

I only had three sales on my yard sale plan yesterday, which foreshadowed a crappy day for secondhand items. Usually, I go through the newspaper and CraigsList ads, plotting the interesting sales on Google maps and deciding on a route. Then we follow that route and stop at interesting stuff along the way. However, in a city like Raleigh, there are enough interesting sales in the paper that I often drive right past neon signs. I'm afraid of dallying too long at crappy small sale after another and therefore missing an excellent church sale. I feel bad for the little sales, for while most of them are selling a bunch of baby clothes that I don't need, some of them are probably selling weird stuff that I would very much be interested in. In fact, when I first started yard saling back in Lenoir, I never looked at the paper at all. I just drove down roads that had a lot of residential areas branching off and followed the signs. Driving past those signs all the time makes me feel like I'm not being true to my roots somehow. Which is totally idiotic.

But today, I got back to my roots, I guess. Since there only were three sales on the plan, I did not take the Google recommended route between them, which would have put me on the interstate. Instead I drove down some main suburban streets and kept my eyes peeled for pieces of cardboard or poster paper tied to road signs. In fact, the three sales on my plan turned out to be total busts. My whole haul today came from small sales. It wasn't a spectacular day, but a solid one.

Josh was out of town this morning, so there was a noticeable lack of book-buying. I did bring home a couple of cookbooks. I try not to buy a lot of cookbooks, mostly because there are more recipes online than I will ever be able to make. But sometimes you run across a really interesting-looking one. I have a couple of older books, which I like mostly for their vintage illustrations. This one I bought for the pictures, excellent condition, and, oh yes, because it was by Mr. and Mrs. Vincent Price.

Basically, the Prices did what I would do if I were super-rich: travel all over the world and ate. They wrote blurbs about restaurants, included a copy of the menu, and then provided recipes for some of the dishes. There are "72 pages of superb full-color photographs," including one of the couple at home in the kitchen. One wonders if Mr. Price speaks in spooky tones to his food. Maybe that is the secret to some dishes.

There was an estate sale in a house hidden up a long driveway in a deceptively new-looking neighborhood. Whoever lived in that house and then died sure was rich. One of the things I love about estate sales is getting to walk around in really beautiful houses. Most of the stuff was pretty expensive, but I came away with some big jars, which apparently used to hold fruit salad. They remind me of my nephew, who used to tell jokes about fruit salad. These jokes all started out with a guy in a restaurant flagging down the waiter and saying, "Waiter, waiter! There's a fly in my fruit salad!" I don't remember any of the punchlines, so you'll just have to make up your own.


Anyway, I was thinking of using them as canisters. They were a quarter apiece, but marked down half price. The lady even rounded down, meaning I totally saved half a penny. I am such the yard sale queen.

I picked up several decorative items, which I've become more interested in now that I have a house with so many naked walls. At some point, I was looking at a something or other at a yard sale and I asked Josh what he thought about it. He said that it didn't really match my house. I was all confused about that. You mean I have to match things? Like with a theme? Or a motif even? I really can't handle that kind of pressure. As far as I'm concerned, my decor does match, and it does have a very distinctive theme. The theme is "Stuff Sandra Likes."

But he seemed to think that my house was kinda rustic and stuff, so the stuff inside needed to be rustic and stuff. Stuff stuff stuff. So I've been keeping that in mind a little more lately. Here are some things to hang on the wall.


They're made of wood.


Wood is rustic. Also, since I like trees, it fits in with "Stuff Sandra Likes."


Do you like trees?

Next time he suggests that something I like does not "match," I will remind him that the gumball machine does not match. It's not rustic at all. You know what else isn't rustic? Electric guitars.

I got that little painting at sale that was advertised as "Totally Gnarly." I would not have described it as "Totally Gnarly," though maybe it was "Pretty Gnarly" or at least "Relatively Gnarly." The sale was being run by a girl my age who was apparently selling all her grandma's stuff. That increased the gnarly levels, because anytime someone is selling someone else's crap, they don't care what they get for it. I had halfway walked away from the sale when I came back and asked how much the lamp was, telling her that I didn't really need it and I didn't want to pay much for it. She said $2 and I said "Gnarly." She also gave me a free bookmark that talked about Jesus' love for me, which is also free.





Okay, here's my favorite thing today. What's that, Sandra? A nice little pic-a-nic basket? Hey, hey BooBoo?


Well, let's open it up.


Those are some small compartments. You couldn't fit very much lunch in there. Surely there is more, and...


OH!


This is so awesome. Right now, I keep my sewing stuff in a seventies green plastic thing with a tray that lifts out. It will be a pleasure to get rid of that thing and transfer everything into this lovely ingenius little box. There are a couple of missing screws, but those are easy to replace.

And that was my day.