After three chorus performances which were fun but way too close together (three in thirty hours), I woke up Monday to some great news. My Penguin editor emailed me to say that a book I wrote twenty years ago was being picked up by an educational publisher to use in the classroom, and my cut would have four zeros in it. Up, up, up.
Wow! I was on Cloud Nine until I remembered that I would owe half of the money to my ex, since I wrote and sold the story during marriage. Up, up, and then down, but not all the way down. I still got four zeros, just half as much.
Then I drove to my beach town, bought a bunch of tea cups, and as the slow-as-molasses girl rang up my dishes and wrapped every one individually and taped the paper (I hate that), I thought about the striped calcite rock in the glass case and how I was going to buy it ($65) as soon as I paid for the dishes. Long story short, a woman came in, saw the rock and bought it before the girl had even finished wrapping my dishes. Down. Then Up when she charged me $39 for four bags of dishes. Clearly, she wasn’t going by the prices, she was just making it up as she went along. I spoke to the woman in line behind me with the rock and asked her if she was a geologist. She said no, but her son was into rocks and she would give it to him for Christmas. She was kind of thrilled.
The rock that got away. Down.
Then the next morning, I was still thinking about that brown and tan striped piece of calcite when I walked into the Seaside Good Will. I found some stuff and noticed a Radio Flyer wagon with wooden sides. There was rust on the bed of the wagon, but $19.99 was a good price. Would it fit in my car, which was filled with donations for a Seaside charity? I wasn’t sure that it would. I bought my stuff and went out to the car. I rearranged the stuff and saw that yes, I could fit the wagon in the back. I could use it when moving things around my beach property, down that long driveway to the street.
I went back inside and found the wagon in an aisle, filled with other items. Someone had grabbed it. Down again.
I’ve been thrifting for decades, and I know better than to wait. I must be slipping in my old age, because twice in two days I lost out on something I wanted because I waited.
Don’t wait while thrifting. If you think you might want it, pick it up and carry it around. You can always set it back down if you change your mind.
My roof leaked Wednesday morning while I was doing Zumba. Water was dripping from the dining room ceiling. Down.
But I was here to discover it and get it repaired before the atmospheric river coming next week. Up.
The roofer came out today and will do the repair tomorrow.
It’s been a rollercoaster week, or put another way, life.
FIRST DATE, WORST DATE EVER! 