Antiques

Villainous Notions

Last week, I bought a footstool. It was dark cheap wood and had dark tapestry fabric on the top, but the lid lifted for storage and it was only 5 bucks, so I got to thinking that I would paint the wood grey and re-upholster the top. Which I did, and the paint looked lovely (aside from the transfer I may or may not have put on slightly off-centre—see picture at the end). The problem was that the fabric on the underside looked choppy and unprofessional no matter how much I tried to trim it, but then I had an idea. I rummaged through my basket of sewing notions—well, it’s not so much a basket as an empty Quality Street tin—and found something that just might resolve the issue:

Notice the name of the manufacturer? Obviously kismet.

Me: Do you think this would work?
Ken: What is it?
Me: According to the packet, it’s Rick Rack.
Ken: Maybe…
Me: No, you’re right. The colour is all wrong. However, RickRack would make a great name for a James Bond villain.

Cue naughty fantasy sequence (and if you’re a little prudish, you might want to skip this one)…

M: Double-Oh-Seven, we need you. Apparently, RickRack has abducted Pussy Galore!
Bond: Pussy Galore? Again?! Well, Pussy is delightful. I can see why he keeps coming back for more.
M: Intercept RickRack before he gets to the Upper Holstery Islands and deliver Pussy to us, James.
Bond: I’m shaken, not stirred by this turn of events.

Some time later, on a cargo ship off the coast of the Upper Holstery Islands…

RickRack: Ah, Mr. Bond, I’ve been expecting you.
Bond: Release Pussy Galore, RickRack! There’s nowhere you can run.
RickRack: I’m never gonna give her up. I’m never gonna let her down.
Bond: Did—did you just Rickroll me?
RickRack: No, I RickRACKED you, Mr. Bond. But you can have her. To be honest, I’m not particularly fond of Pussy. I only kidnapped her to lure you to the Upper Holsteries.
Bond: But why, RickRack?
RickRack: Because…because I’m in love with you, James. Is there a chance for us?
Bond: Have you actually SEEN any of my movies?
RickRack: Sigh. I’m never gonna give you up—
Bond: Just stop. Come on, Pussy.
Pussy Galore: Oh James, thank you for saving me!
Bond: Enough of the small talk. We need to hurry—I have a date with Holly Goodhead later and no one misses a date with Goodhead!

And all I can do at this point is apologize for my giggly thirteen-year-old imagination, but in my defense:
a) I was going to include a scene with Bond and Q discussing a missile launcher that was extremely euphemistic but even I know when enough is enough and b) I’m not the one who named the Bond girls things like Miss Goodthighs, Chew Me, Xenia Onatopp, Holly Goodhead, Plenty O’Toole, and Pussy Galore. That was a DIFFERENT giggly thirteen-year-old.

Breaking The Mold

Update: I posted the following, and then went to WordPress and saw all the comments–from NOVEMBER 2023! I have no idea what’s going in. I literally couldn’t find any evidence that this post had EVER gone live, until I published it, seemingly for the first time, and discovered that it had, indeed been previously posted, to very great success. I had done keyword searches, looked through all my posts, and nothing. So my only conclusion is that it’s The Pirate’s Revenge!

Every time I look at my list of posts on WordPress, I see one in my drafts folder called Blow Molds. I remember writing it—Ken remembers reading it after I initially wrote it, and it never even occurred to me that I had never posted it. It was supposed to go live on Sunday, November 19 2023. I realized this week after investigating that IT NEVER GOT POSTED AND NONE OF YOU EVER SAID “WHERE IS THIS WEEK’S POST, MYDANGBLOG?!” At any rate, it was really funny, so I’m posting it this week so I hope you enjoy it, even almost 2 years later when I no longer work in an antique market:

It’s gotten quite a lot busier at work lately. First, because the summer construction project that was supposed to finish in September is finally done, and people have actually stopped using the antique market parking lot as a bypass/speedway and are now parking and shopping, and second, because Christmas is coming and everyone buys their Christmas antiques in November. The current trend, carried over from last year is BLOW MOLDS. If you don’t know what a blow mold is, it’s a large plastic figure in the shape of a Santa or a Snowman, made out of plastic which has been blown into a mold—hence the name. They plug in and light up at night, turning your house into a veritable winter wonderland, even if you still don’t have any snow. These things are getting as expensive to buy as ceramic Christmas trees (you know, the ones everybody’s grandma had in the 70s). And the more savvy collectors are looking for the extra, the unique, the really hard-to-find ones. Currently, about the cashier’s counter, we have a giant blow mold Santa in a blow mold sleigh, with a team of blow mold reindeer pulling him. Along the side, it says “Noel”, which already caused a stir because one of the young bosses had apparently never taken French in school and thought that Noel was Santa’s first name, like “Noel Santa Claus” and we all had a good laugh until someone corrected him.

And it’s no surprise that on Wednesday, my boss came to the till with an older couple. He pointed up to the shelf above the cash counter and told his brother to get a step stool so they could get a purchase down. I was standing ready as the couple came to my till. My boss called over the vendor number and the price, which I thought was extremely high, but then again, it WAS a lot of blow mold, and in the item description I typed “Santa Reindeer Blow Mold” as one would. The woman who was buying was quite excited:

Me: That’s a really awesome one. Good for you—great find.
Woman: I know. It’s so cool.
Me: I’ve never seen one like that before—really unique.
Woman: It’s perfect. Our foyer is a pirate ship.

And if you’re like me at all, you probably just did a double take. “Our foyer is a pirate ship”?? And several things went through my mind simultaneously, like 1) What the f*ck does she mean? Does she actually LIVE on a pirate ship, the bow of which she considers her foyer or 2) Is the foyer in her home DECORATED like a pirate ship? And 3) Why the f*ck would anyone a) live in a pirate ship or b) decorate their home like one and 4) The biggest question of all is HOW THE HELL IS THIS GIANT SANTA/SLEIGH/REINDEER COMBINATION A PART OF THE PIRATE MOTIF??!!

I had a vision of the whole thing hanging from the ceiling above the foredeck with pirates down below all gesturing and threatening it with their pirate swords and whatnot, when I suddenly realized that the guys had simply moved the whole blow mold out of the way to retrieve a huge, framed shadow box that was full of replica pistols. And then the whole thing suddenly made sense in that weird “it doesn’t really make sense that anyone would be that jazzed about pirate decorating” but at least the fake guns were more aligned with the aesthetic. Afterwards, my boss had to correct the item description in the computer system so the vendor wouldn’t be confused over someone paying $600 for a blow mold instead of his gun box. But it was surreal.

Clocked Again

The story this week begins and ends with a clock. Oh no! I hear you say. Did Mydangblog buy ANOTHER CLOCK?! Indeed, I did, and stop judging me. It wasn’t my fault, and the saga is complex and convoluted to say the least…

On Friday, Ken and I went to the antique market to stock my booth. I wanted to look around a bit, and Ken was tired from being awake, so he went to nap in the SUV while I had a browse. I was just about to leave when one of my former co-workers said, “Oh hey—Buddy on third has a clock he wants to show you.” I knew Ken was waiting in a hot car without water or treats, but it was a CLOCK. I booted it up to the third floor, where ‘Buddy’ (not his real name, obvs.), who also works there, was wandering around. When he saw me, his eyes lit up like a drug dealer when his favourite meth head comes around the corner. “Good to see you. I have something I want to show you,” he said, mysteriously, not realizing that I’d been given the “meth heads” up.

Me: Is it a clock?
Buddy: Yeah. It’s really nice. Look.
Me: Ooh, that IS nice. But if I bring another clock home, Ken will kill me.
Buddy: I’m only asking ten bucks.
Me: Sold.

Fortunately, the current clock in my bathroom had just stopped working, so when I crept out to the parking lot, carefully opened the door and slid the clock in the back, I had a ready excuse for Ken once we got home. “It’s nice,” he said. “But couldn’t you use one of your other, several many clocks instead of buying this one?”

“Very few of my 64 clocks work,” I reminded him.

So I put it on the shelf in my bathroom. It had a battery in it already and seemed to be keeping good time. On Saturday morning, I was getting ready for work and I looked up at the clock. “9:05,” I said to myself. “It’s keeping perfect time.” Then I squinted. And tilted my head. Then put on my reading glasses. What had at first seemed to be an abstract floral background turned out to be an English garden with a Romanesque folly…And then I did what any normal person would do—I called Ken (he was out walking the dog). “When you get back, come upstairs—I want to show you something funny. A few minutes later:

Ken: What is it?
Me: You know that clock I bought yesterday?
Ken: Yeah, it looks good up there on the shelf. The time looks right…
Me: Take a closer look. What’s wrong with it?
Ken (also squints): Uh, is it sideways?
Me: Yep.

Instead of it being 9:05, it was twenty after twelve. The clock was a quarter turn sideways. But even at a quarter turn sideways, it LOOKED like the right time. I guess Buddy looked at it, decided not to worry about it being completely sideways, set the time and figured “Meh—for ten bucks, no one’s gonna notice.” And he was almost right.

Ken: Huh. Do you want me to rotate it?
Me: Sure.

So he popped the clock face out of the case and put it to rights. I left for work. I got home a few hours later, and went up to my bathroom to retrieve a part-bottle of wine that I’d hidden there on Friday night (that’s another story), and I looked at the clock. It now said 6:05. Which would have been fine, except it was 4:05. I took it down off the shelf—the hour hand was now loosey-goosey, having fallen off the stem when Ken took the face out. And the whole thing was encased in plastic. There was no conceivable way to fix it, despite my best efforts, which involved looking at it questioningly and shaking it. Then I had a brainstorm—I had recently purchased an antique mantel clock that someone had converted into a battery-operated one, but the battery pack was broken. If I could only get the hands out of THIS clock, I could put the whole contraption in the antique one. But how? I would need a hammer. But if you know anything about me at all, you know that I keep a hammer in almost every room of the house. So I got out my bathroom hammer and broke the plastic casing—carefully of course, because I needed the hands intact.

And after some fiddling, I managed to recreate the entire assemblage in my antique mantel clock, so I am officially a clockematician, or whatever you call someone who cleverly combines two clocks into one, like a ticking Venn diagram, and I can say that with confidence because I am a clockematician. When I fixed my mantel clock on Saturday afternoon, which also involved finding a new second hand, which was red and I had to colour it black with a Sharpie to match, it was 4:30. I’ve been writing this post for a little over 40 minutes, so my mantel clock should say 5:12. Only time will tell…

P.S. It says 5:11. Close enough.

Dem Bones, Dem Bones

One Saturday morning last fall, Ken said to me, “Hey, let’s go to the Christie Antique Show.” I did what I always do and immediately said, “Yes! Let’s do that.” Then I did the next thing I always do and immediately had second thoughts and regrets, especially after looking on the website which said that there were free shuttle buses from the parking lot to the show site. All I could think of was the line-up to get into the parking lot, the line-up to get on the bus, and the obvious huge crowds of people that would be there. So I said, “Maybe let’s not go after all,” but Ken was insistent, even when I was all sad and whiny and like, “I don’t wanna go to the antique show. Don’t make me go to the antique show,” but he made me go anyway on the grounds that “it will be fun.”

Before we left…
Me: I’m taking my wristlet. I don’t want to lug a huge purse around with me.
Five minutes later…
Ken: I’m taking my camera.
Me: You always take your camera. Why are you telling me this?
Ken: Oh, I just thought we were announcing things to each other.
Atlas (from outside): Here’s my annoucement. I’m taking a dump in the back yard! This is fun!

In the car…
Ken: Why are you staring at me like that? Is there something wrong with my outfit?
Me: I wasn’t staring at you. I was looking past you out the window.
Ken: No, you were looking at me.
Me: How would you even know that?! I’m wearing dark sunglasses. Besides, you look fine. You’re wearing your red plaid shirt and lime green T-shirt. What could possibly be wrong with that?

A moral dilemma…

Me: Did you see that video on Facebook about the job interview question?
Ken: The one where you’re driving in a lightning storm and you see three people at the side of the road?
Me: Right—“You see your best friend who once saved your life, a beautiful woman, and a sick elderly lady standing by the side of the road in a lightning storm, and you only have one seat. Who do you take?” It was easy. I solved it right away.
Ken: What do you mean, “you solved it”? Did you watch the video to the end?
Me: I didn’t need to watch it to the end. The old lady sits on my lap in the driver’s seat, my best friend sits in the other seat, and the beautiful woman sits on HIS lap.
Ken: You’re not allowed to do that. You only have one extra seat.
Me: I can do whatever the f*ck I want. It’s MY ethics. I’m the Kobayashi Maru.
Ken: No, in this situation, you’re Kirk. But it doesn’t matter. That’s not the right answer. Why don’t you EVER watch videos to the end? The CORRECT answer is: You give your keys to your best friend because you trust him to take the old woman to the hospital and then come back for you.  This leaves you alone with the beautiful woman. Then he comes back and—
Me: This is starting to sound suspiciously like that logic problem where you have a rowboat and you have to take a bunch of animals across a river. It’s a MORAL DILEMMA, not a logic problem, Ken. Also, why do I want to be alone with the woman?
Ken: So you can hit it off with her.
Me: A) She’s not my type and B) That’s why my solution is more ethical. I put the woman on my best friend’s lap so that HE could hit it off with her. I’m self-sacrificial as f*ck. There. I win. ALL THE MORALS ARE MINE.
Ken: Sigh.
Me: Hey! What if my best friend, the beautiful woman, and the elderly sick woman are ALL THE SAME PERSON?
Ken: I can see that. I mean, you’re MY best friend, you’re beautiful, elderly, and you were sneezing yesterday so you MIGHT be sick…
Me: I’m ELDERLY? Your outfit sucks.

Then we got to the antique show, and it wasn’t as bad as I thought. We had no problem getting parked, got a bus right away, and made it into the showgrounds less than 5 minutes after arriving. But then we realized that there were 100s of dealers and we needed a system, which was basically to wander down one row and back up another, saying, “Have we been down this aisle before? Oh yeah, I remember the giant elephant statue.” We have a friend who had a booth, and we finally found him. He said he was having a pretty good day, selling quite a bit and whatnot, when Ken pointed to a large box of bones at the front of his tent. They were priced at $5 each. When we asked about it, he said that last month, a guy came into his store with this big box of bones, wondering if he’d buy them. He was skeptical at first, but they sold like hotcakes (if hotcakes were all dirty and decomposed). So when the guy came back with another box, he bought that too, and brought them to sell at the show.

Friend: People are going nuts for them. I’ve already sold most of them. Quite a few people have been teachers, you know—want to use them in their classrooms.
Ken: What kind of bones are they?
Friend: Cow bones. I think.
Me: Cow bones?
Friend: Probably.

I don’t know if I want my child in a classroom where the teacher is like, “Hey kids, check this out! It LOOKS like a human femur, but the guy told me it’s probably just a cow bone.” And the weirdest thing was, he wasn’t the ONLY dealer selling bones. There were so many of them that we lost count. There were skulls, antlers, jaw bones, full skeletons of small rodents, you name it. We walked past a booth where a guy was showing a woman a skull that was on top of a log with a branch going through the skull’s eye socket. He was actually saying this: “Sometimes when animals die in the forest, they do it on top of logs and such, and then they go into rigor mortis there. So I’ve arranged the skull and log like this—kind of like a nature scene.”

And while this may seem like a one-off, at the antique market where I currently work, there’s a dealer who has glass vials full of chicken bones, and they also sell like crazy. Go figure. I guess I should have kept last year’s Christmas turkey carcass–I could have made a fortune.

It’s Puzzling, Isn’t It?

Ken and I love to do jigsaw puzzles. We usually have one going in the kitchen where we can take a minute and pop in a few pieces between other work. I find it relaxing and I think there’s proven evidence that you get a little dopamine rush when a piece clicks. But sometimes I wonder about the people who design them, like what choices are they making with the illustrations? Case in point, last week, we got a new Charles Wysocki puzzle. Charles Wysocki was an American painter who specialized in “primitive Americana”. If you’ve ever done a Wysocki puzzle, you know it heavily features this idyllic view of late 1800s towns with a LOT of American flags everywhere, and as a Canadian, I find this weird, because I’ve never done a Canadian puzzle covered in OUR flag, but sometimes there are also clocks, so it all evens out. This week, though, I opened up the new puzzle and looked at the poster, excited to discover that all the buildings were antique stores and curiosity shops. “Oh, wow!” I said to Ken. “Look at all the cool stuff in the windows of these antique stores!” He agreed that it was going to be a lot of fun, considering we have an antique business ourselves, and I started to build the frame. But then I looked closer and something dawned on me: the painting the puzzle was based on represented life in the 1800s, and all the people were wearing old-timey clothes and driving horses and buggies so NONE OF THE THINGS IN THE WINDOWS WOULD BE ANTIQUES! The stuff in the stores were things that those people would have used every single day and probably thought were modern conveniences, like the railroad lantern, the ironstone china, and the coffee grinder. If they wanted to be truly authentic and antique, shouldn’t the stores have sarcophaguses or suit of armour at least? So unless this town is one of those places where actors are all dressed up and pretend to be pioneers for the tourists, it’s seriously out of whack.

And it reminded me of the time that I started working on a Dowdle puzzle, which are based on the work of a different American artist, Eric Dowdle. This one was of Peggy’s Cove in Canada, which is strange considering he was from Utah, but it does explain the presence of a random Mountie standing by a flagpole, like that’s just what Mounties do all the time or whatnot. I started to piece the edge together as one does and immediately discovered that one of the pieces was all chewed up and distorted, like a dog had eaten it and spat (or sh*t) it back out. Oh well, I thought, at least it’s not missing, because I HATE when a puzzle has a missing piece, and I think I’ve written about suspecting Atlas of stealing puzzle pieces before. But it got worse. See, there are a lot of tiny human (?) figures in the puzzle, and as I started to pull them out, it became clear that the artist who designed it was, perhaps, really more into horror stories than pastoral scenes of a harbour town.

Like, OK, it’s bad enough that there are 4 dudes in three-piece suits and fedoras standing on a rock looking like they all want to talk to me about Jesus, and numerous people are hoisting giant lobsters in the air and swinging them around like that’s a completely normal activity (and maybe it is in Peggy’s Cove–I’m going there in August so I’ll keep you posted) but then, in the background, there’s this guy:

What the absolute f*ck is this guy doing, crawling out over a rock towards you like that girl from The Ring?! You don’t notice him at first, because there’s so much else going on, what with all the proselytizing and lobster waving, but once you do, HE’S ALL YOU SEE. And then suddenly it seems like maybe instead of an idyllic fishing village, this is a zombie town, and all the figures are now ominous and the lobsters are screaming for help. In the poster that came with the puzzle, he appeared to be wearing large, weird mittens on his hands, and I really didn’t want to find the rest of him in case he came to life and started crawling over the back of my couch.

So anyway, I’ll keep doing my Wysocki–I just won’t look too closely at the horses’ eyes, just in case they’re devil horses or something, because you never know…

Plastic Not So Fantastic

Last weekend, Ken and I took advantage of the warm fall weather and made a lovely barbecued steak dinner, with roast potatoes and Caesar salad. I was almost finished eating when something caught in my throat. I started to cough but no matter what I did, I couldn’t dislodge it. I figured it was a peppercorn from the sauce and that I would swallow it eventually. It was still bothering me later that night and I started to poke around with my toothbrush—luckily I don’t have a sensitive gag reflex—but I couldn’t feel anything. I tried looking in the mirror but I couldn’t see anything either. I woke up the next morning and it still felt like something was stuck in the back of my throat. And to make things worse, I had a terrible headache and my allergies had kicked into high gear. I was super stuffed up and my face felt swollen. This went on all weekend, and then on Monday morning, I was getting ready for work. I felt another terrible tickle in my throat, coughed hard, and then I felt something in my mouth. I reached in, pulled it out…AND IT WAS A PIECE OF PLASTIC. Like, a piece of plastic you might find in the packaging, say, of a Caesar salad kit. I put it on the tip of my finger to better examine it. It was kind of twisted, and weird, and as I simultaneously went to reach for my reading glasses and yelled for Ken, the damn thing fell off the top of my finger and disappeared.

Ken: What’s wrong?
Me: I… there was…aw f*ck! I was going to show you the piece of plastic that was stuck in my throat but it vanished.
Ken: Plastic? Seriously?
Me: Well, I’d show you and prove it but it flew off my finger and disappeared.
Ken: Suuuure, honey. Let me know if you find it. Are you feeling better now?
Me (mentally taking stock of my feelings and being pleasantly surprised): Yes, I am—it doesn’t feel like I have anything in my throat anymore.

And not only that, my allergies began to calm down—by the end of the day, I was completely back to normal. Normal enough, anyway. But having a piece of plastic embedded in the back of your throat isn’t something I recommend.

In other news, Ken and I are toying with the idea of selling our house and downsizing, so we had a real estate friend come through the other night to tell us what we might need to do to get the house ready for showing, i.e. what furniture and objets d’art would have to be removed. It went as well as expected:

Real Estate Agent: The kitchen seems fine, except for that table by the door.
Me: But that’s the table I use for my purse…
REA: Can you use something else? And what about this trunk and random leather doctor’s bag in the corner?
Me: Well, it’s an “arrangement” but I was planning on selling it–it doesn’t serve any real purpose aside from being pretty, I suppose…

In the family room:

Ken: What about this wall of paintings? A little too much?
Me: Shut up, KEN.
REA: No, artwork is fine…are those ALL Paris?
Ken: Sigh. Yes. They’re all Paris.
Me: It’s a “theme”. Just wait until she sees all the Lego in your bathroom, KEN.
REA: Lego in the bathroom?
Ken: I’m not allowed to decorate with plastic anywhere else in the house.
Me: Don’t talk to me about plastic right now, KEN.

All The Wascally Wabbits

If you’re around the same age as me, or even older or younger, you may be familiar with “Bunnykins” china. This is a pattern made by Royal Doulton featuring adorable anthropomorphized rabbits and it’s been a staple of baby showers, christening gifts, and Christmas presents for decades. I had a Bunnykins bowl, mug, and plate when I was a child, and my daughter also had one. Even today, they’re still popular and I sell a lot of them at the antique market. The other day, I was offered a really good deal on a box of Bunnykins china—plates, bowls, mugs, and egg cups—and I couldn’t say no. I brought the box home and started to unpack it, showing each piece to Ken, until he looked at one carefully and his brow furrowed:

Ken: What the hell is going on HERE?
Me: What are you talking about? It was a really good deal.
Ken: Not that. What are these rabbits DOING?!

It was in that moment that I realized two things. First, that I had never actually looked closely at the rabbits on the china, and second, that the rabbits on the china are INSANE. On one plate, the mother rabbit, who’s dressed like a character from Little House on the Prairie, is apparently trying to hang wallpaper (?) and she’s being swarmed by an assortment of lagamorphic “helpers” who are systematically destroying both the wallpaper and the room she’s trying to redecorate. One bunny has dumped a bucket of paste on another’s head, there’s ripping and tearing and randomly, and a mouse is running away with one of the rolls.

On a different piece, a bowl, the same mother rabbit is losing her sh*t because she’s taken her bunnies shopping and they’ve overturned a vegetable cart and are now rioting like an insurrectionist mob. They’re stomping on cabbages, throwing potatoes, and the same random mouse is part of the mayhem AGAIN. And on a mug, there was a scene of the mother and her horde at the butcher’s shop, only the butcher was a pig dressed in an apron and hat, and he was selling her what LOOKED LIKE PORK while her bunny babies destroyed his shop. Exactly what kind of life lessons is Royal Doulton trying to teach young children? Because it seems very subversive and violent and all the people who buy Bunnykins china because “it’s so cute” have obviously never looked closely at it either because I think the person who created these scenes is an anarchist and I’m surprised that none of this china has hidden messages on it like “Rabbits cannot make the revolution. Rabbits can only be the revolution.” Seriously—if you have any of this stuff in your house, take a good long look at it—and then go vandalize something.

Speaking of taking a good long look at something, the other day, I was on Facebook Marketplace and I saw an ad for a “Leather Reclining Couch” that made me look at it for a very long time, mostly because I was trying to figure out what the hell was going on, like either the guy was completely unaware that his photos were being used for the ad, or it was the most clever marketing ploy since Royal Doulton created their bunnies with an attitude. 

I call this first picture “Paint Me Like One Of Your French Girls” and it’s a very good example of how you can use this couch in a very suggestive way. The second picture I’ve dubbed “The Thinker” because he’s obviously deep in thought, contemplating how to blow up a space station or whatnot.

And in the last picture, he’s obviously emulating the famous painting by Henry Wallis entitled The Death of Chatterton.

All I know is that the couch is “Pending” which means someone is planning on buying it, and I really hope for their sake that this guy comes with it.

Owning It

Last week, I was out and about, having gone to one of the big box bookstores to see about doing a book signing in the fall. It was a strange experience because I hadn’t been in that particular bookstore since before covid, when I’d done a book signing for The Dome. The change was remarkable–there were very few actual books in the store and the vast majority were from ‘big’ corporate publishers, a lot of floor space was taken up by home décor, there was no local author section, and the terminals were all shut so if you wanted to look anything up you had to scan a QR code. I spoke to the manager—the earliest I could book anything was September, which actually suited me, but when she said, “People are just starting to come back—it’s been very slow,” I really wanted to say, “Maybe that’s because there isn’t much to come back FOR, unless you have a fetish for scented candles.” But I consoled myself because I was close to a large thrift store that I hadn’t visited for a while. I went in, not expecting much, but wouldn’t you know—they’d just had a huge donation of silver, and I scored a couple of beautiful silver candelabras for $5 each, as well as a few other great bargains, including a stained glass lamp for $15. I went to the check-out and the woman in front of me was trying to use her debit card but the machine was acting up. “Don’t worry,” the young cashier said, “it’s just being temperamental. Some days it works; some days it’s like an an immovable object meets an unstoppable force.” I laughed to myself and then called out, “You’ve got Schrodinger’s debit machine there, I think.”

The cashier’s eyes lit up and he said, “It’s simultaneously working and not working.”

I laughed again and felt like I’d finally met a kindred spirit. When I got to the counter, I put my items down and said, “You guys still have the 10% Senior’s Discount, right?

He nodded “We sure do.”

Me: Do you need to see ID with that?
Cashier: No. I just need you to say it.
Me: Say it?
Cashier: Say it out loud for me. Come on.
Me (rolls eyes): I’m a Senior.
Cashier: Hahahaha! I made you say it.

Now before you think I was offended or something, I WASN’T. Because a) it was actually super-funny and I laughed my *ss off, and b) I got 10% off all the stuff I got so when I sell it, my profit margin will be even better. He also told me that he didn’t always make people say it, just the ones who looked like they’d be cool about it and think it was funny. And I did.

In other news, I am so happy because I just accepted the position of Summer Writer-In-Residence for a local library system. Starting in July, I’ll be running programming, mentoring writers, and participating in writing groups. And as an extra bonus, as if this wasn’t already awesome, they’ll be hosting the official book launch for my new book, the sequel to The Seventh Devil, called The Devil You Know, which is supposed to be out late June/early July.

It was worth it.

Radioactive

See, antiques ARE fun.

One of the great things about working at the antique market is that I’ve discovered so many fun and fascinating gadgets. A few weeks ago, I was helping a customer look through a bulk jewellery tray and he asked, “Do you mind if I use my diamond tester on these rings?” And I was like, “A DIAMOND TESTER? I must see this!” So he pulled out this little device and touched the tip to one of the stones in a ring, and…nothing. But three rings later, a tiny alarm sounded. “I’ll take this one,” he smiled. I immediately went home and ordered not only my own diamond tester, but also a tester that distinguishes between natural diamonds and moissanite, which are lab-grown diamonds. The testers came the next day, and I gleefully went around the house testing all of our jewellery and discovered that a pair of earrings I’d never worn and just tossed in a drawer actually had diamond chips in them. I still won’t wear them because they’re not my style being all fancy and dangly (and no, that’s not my cool nickname) but it’s still good to find out. Then I took the testers to work but I didn’t find anything surprising because almost all the jewellery dealers have their own testers. Still, you never know your luck, like that customer.

Then a couple of weeks later, another customer was walking around with a tiny blacklight. “What’s that for?” I asked.

“Oh, I collect uranium glass. If you point a UV light at it, it fluoresces.” He showed me, by pointing it at a small green plate, which immediately turned neon. So guess what I immediately did? That’s right—ordered my own little blacklight from Amazon. And then I went through the house pointing it at stuff to see if any of my glassware glowed in the dark. And I was amazed to discover that my house is full of glassware made with uranium, like, for example, this innocuous little vase and the lamp next to it.

Before
After

Apparently, I’m a hive of radioactivity, which might account for what I saw on LinkedIn this morning:

LinkedIn doesn’t have many uses, but it DOES tell you who’s been looking at your profile, and why the hell is some American Senator trying to suss out who the mysterious mydangblog could be?! I mean it says my actual name on my profile, and pictures of my books with my own damn name on it are right here on this website. Do they think I’m secretly running a nuclear power plant in small town Ontario?

U.S. Republican Senator 1: Forget Russia—we should be more worried about the Canadians. We’ve detected a substantial amount of uranium close to the border.
U.S. Republican Senator 2: Not surprising. They’re a bunch of commie pinkos up there.
U.S. Republican Senator 1: Call Ted Cruz. He used to be Canadian. Maybe he can reason with them.
U.S. Republican Senator 2: There’s no reasoning with those frosty bastards.
Aide: This just in, breaking news from Fox! The Canadian uranium stockpile is being kept in a house owned by someone named ‘mydangblog’ but who prefers to be called…(checks notes)…Player One!
U.S. Republican Senator 1: Ooh. That IS a cool nickname.

I guess if the U.S Army shows up at my door, I’d better hide all the antique glass.

In other news, it’s become so prevalent on Facebook Marketplace to advertise things as free and then list exorbitant prices in the description that if you actually HAVE something for free, you need to be extremely adamant about it, thusly:

And just to make it REALLY clear, this is what the item’s description says, in case there was any doubt:

I so badly wanted to be a frosty bastard and message the person: “How much is this?” But, truth be told, I don’t even know what the f*ck it is, and if it’s what’s in the picture, I don’t want his glowing wood clones–I can glow just fine on my own.

Getting Thrifty With It; Tiger Lily

I’ve always loved thrift store shopping. When I was younger, it was the only place to find the vintage clothing that my friends and I, 1980s club kids, favoured. When I got older and money got tighter, it was a cheap way to look nice. And now that Ken and I have re-instated the antiques business and I’ve opened a second booth at the antique market, thrift stores are a wonderful place to find trinkets, odds and ends and whatnot that I can resell. The other day in fact, I was at a local thrift store, Goodwill, and found some good deals–a vintage action figure for a buck, a few pieces of ironstone and a depression glass rooster candy dish for 4.50. It’s from the 1930s, in excellent condition, and worth a heck of a lot more. So imagine my excitement when one of my co-workers at the antique market mentioned that there was a Goodwill ‘outlet store’ not too far away.

Me: OUTLET, you say? A place where things are even cheaper than at the regular Goodwill?
Co-worker: Yeah, it’s pretty cool. You pay by the pound. We’ve gotten some good stuff there.
Me: Where is this mecca of good deals?! I must know!
Co-worker: Just up the highway. Here are the directions.

I was super-excited, imagining a store lined with shelves of beautiful china, glassware, and other assorted sundries, and me with a shopping cart, just filling it up with things that didn’t weigh too much. Finally, last week, after days of anticipation, I was able to go there.

AND IT WAS THE MOST TERRIFYING EXPERIENCE OF MY LIFE.

I arrived shortly after 10:30 in the morning, having followed my GPS instructions like a pirate with a treasure map. I pulled into the parking lot and the red flag should have gone up right there. It was PACKED. People were double-parked and cars were squeezed together, but luckily my car is quite tiny, and I managed to find a spot partly on the grass. I grabbed a couple of reusable shopping bags and walked through the door…into a giant open room. It was full of large, wheeled bins surrounded by people, who were going through them, tossing things up in the air, digging through to the bottom, and pulling things out. I was hesitant, and took a tentative step forward to peek into one of the bins, which was full of what looked like broken CDs. Then I noticed in the far corner, there was a line of tape on the floor, and behind the line of tape, there was a line of men, standing shoulder to shoulder, fidgeting, rocking back and forth on their heels and looking desperate and hungry. A store worker went by:

Me: Excuse me. That line-up over there—is that where I’m supposed to wait my turn or something?
Worker: Oh no. You can look in all the bins over here. Those guys are waiting for the new bins to come out. You have to stay behind the line until the new bins come to a complete stop and the back-room workers have had time to step away. Then we give a signal and you can dive right in.
Me: Maybe I’ll just watch for a bit.

After a minute, the doors to the warehouse suddenly flew open. The air bristled with anticipation and the men in line started cracking their knuckles and bouncing up and down on their toes. The bins were wheeled over to the corner and parked. A man began to move and a woman shrieked, “NOT YET!! STAY BACK!! The men muttered in frustration while the carts were positioned, and then the workers let go and backed away quickly as a whistle sounded. The line surged forward and everything became pure chaos. Arms disappeared into the bins, then reappeared holding perceived treasures. A cry went up as one man triumphantly brandished a coil of copper tubing. Two other men tussled over loose hockey cards, and another ran back to his shopping cart (I realized they all had carts lined up against the back wall) with a Coleman cooler. It was like feeding frenzy time at the shark tank, with vintage radios and glass vases as chum. Then, as quickly as it had begun, the men tossed their finds into their respective carts and ran, as a unit, to the opposite corner, where ANOTHER LINE FORMED. Apparently, the new bins were placed in alternating corners, and sure enough, a minute later, a set of full bins arrived, and a fresh round of shrieking and digging commenced.

So what did I do? What do you think? I tucked my reusable shopping bags under my arm, got the hell out of there, and drove like the wind to the calm oasis of Value Village.

In other news, I had the tremendous honour recently of being asked to write the foreword to my good friend and brilliant poet Susan Richardson’s latest compilation titled Tiger Lily, to be released on August 19. The collection is an ekphrastic collaboration between Susan and artist Jane Cornwell, and it’s just brilliant. You can pre-order it here. And here’s a sneak preview of one of my favourites, Mermaids Are Real: