This week’s yard-sale take

Not such a good yard-sale morning, this, but still fun, and I did get some things I liked.

$5 – potted palm, from a very nice lady who also showed me how to start an avocado seed
50¢ – two framed Japanese prints — these I plan to give to Shra to start her non-free wall art collection ;b (if you’re reading this — hope you’re interested!)
75¢ – garden trowel and cultivator, very nice quality, from a 91-year-old lady (so how old must these be?!)
free – set of five vintage white plastic trays, about 4″x7″, from the same lady. These will make excellent drawer organizers (which we don’t need) or paint-mixing trays (which I might).

Grand total: $6.25!

It’s funny how each week there’s a different trend. This time there were: a decent number of board games in good condition (none of which, sadly, I needed), a ton of uninteresting smallish wooden picture frames, a lot of cheap jewelry, someone’s enormous collection of baseball cards, and boxes of nails and other hardware in tiny old jars. Oh! And a box of astrology books — weird ones — and an amusing old (I would guess midcentury) pocket guide to speaking Chinese. I almost bought that just for fun. There were also many houseplants but none of them looked very happy, except for the potted palm, and an amaryllis I didn’t feel like dealing with. The sales were mostly pretty small — some just a couple of tables; even the multi-family sales were often just a couple of tables per family — and correspondingly so were the wares. There were lots of small drinking glasses, but no tall tumblers, dessert plates but no dinner plates, little baskets but no big ones, etc. Wait, I take this back — there was one thing that was really huge: a 1980s advertising poster for a ballet company that looked big enough to cover an accent wall. You’d have to be a real fan of that ballet company, possibly even of that particular dancer, to want that.

I was quite disappointed because one sale I had particularly wanted to go to — they advertised scrapbooking supplies and I was hoping to get some craft punches or scissors or even an organizer — didn’t seem to exist when I got to the address. Their Craigslist posting hadn’t named a start time, so maybe they weren’t planning to start until later. Very disappointing. Nevertheless, as usual, I met a lot of awfully nice people, explored the neighborhood some more, did my singing practice, talked to some cute kids, and listened to the 91-year-old lady tell me at length about how she was twice burgled (poor dear!). She was sweet, and very active, considering she’s three months away from 92. She’s doing even better than my Gong-Gong, who himself is in excellent health for being about the same age!

I’m going to a baseball game with Dana later. I’m excited to see her and excited to sample the food at the stadium!