Normally, on Day 2, I spend the whole day thrifting and doing yard work. But today I wrote in the morning, had a nice chat with a college friend now in Georgia about her son’s wedding, took Pepper for a walk, played ball with Daisy, and then talked on the phone with a friend going through some bad health stuff while I pulled weeds and gathered up pine needles.
It’s a good thing that I hadn’t left to go thrifting because my tree guys showed up a day early. There’s no way they could’ve gotten into the back yard with Pepper there to stop them. I said good-bye to my friend and then got the dogs situated so that the tree crew could come through the gate and do the work. The estimator was a bit confused as to what I wanted since I wasn’t here when he came to give me a price. Then the neighbor on the shared driveway asked the guys to cut some limbs that hang over her parking spot and belong to my tree. I didn’t want the price to go up but since they weren’t taking out a bush that the estimator thought I wanted gone, the price stayed the same.
Soon a second truck showed up, and now there were six guys in the driveway. I paid one brother (Tree Brothers) and everybody was happy. They ran the wood chipper and backed their truck out of my driveway. I got the dogs back into the back yard and decided to eat my lunch before heading out to thrift.
Then I drove to Seaside to do three things: wash my car at the super-duper cheapie car wash, go to the Good Will, and go to the other thrift store a block away, the one whose name I can’t ever remember.
I spaced out during the car wash and forgot to change soap to rinse and had to do another round which cost me $8 instead of $4. Then I took the alley two blocks to the Good Will, tried to turn the car around to donate at the truck and ended up getting hemmed in by another donor and blocked two cars trying to leave. What a mess! Then I went around the block, pulled into a spot and walked my donation over to the truck.
Once inside, I found beautiful floral Wedgwood dinner plates plus a lot of other stuff. The check-out woman was super unfriendly, probably wondering why I was buying so many dishes that she had to wrap. The second thrift store had some Romanian tea cups, pink and white, a bunch of English saucers, and the cashier and I were talking and I forgot to pay, and she forgot to ask me to pay. The manager caught us just in time before I walked out the door.
Then, back in my own town, I found two thrift stores next door to each other having half-off sales, and I ended up finding more Wedgwood tea cups and a tea pot, a big tapestry, a dog harness, and some other cool stuff. Boy, I can really spend money fast when there is good stuff to buy.
If you’re wondering about the photo, it was my displeasure to find that the Pepto Bismol pink house, which has been a landmark near the beach for at least 19 years and probably a lot longer than that, was newly painted this nondescript color.
So sad, but change is constant.
FIRST DATE, WORST DATE EVER! 