Judy P's Tickle Trunk

……And The Not So Delightful.

Thrift Store shopping has become my favourite indulgence but it is not without its frustrations. Like the old feller said; you gotta eat a lot of Cracker Jacks to get to that prize. Like this one

Bodum

Ooooh, red. Oooh, Bodum brand. Oooh, unbreakable, perfect for the camper. Well, all I have to say now is thank heavens the towel I used as a coffee pot cozy was already brown.

All that good coffee gone to waste.

It leaked over half of the coffee out around those plastic viewing windows before I even got the plunger started. If you are looking for unbreakable don’t buy one of these. And folks, please, if your kitchen gadgets give out, throw them away, don’t give them to a charity unless they have the means to melt them down for base materials. Sheesh. Three dollars right down the tubes.

But not all my purchases are broken. That said, they can still be disappointing. Like this one. Saw it, had to have it. I  have had an advent calendar since the kids were little and didn’t think to stop once they moved out. This was a smokin’ hot deal:

Genuine authentic LLBean advent calendar.

Yup. All the doors worked and all the little knobs were present and accounted for. There were no creepy crawlies or unidentifiable gooey substances lurking in the corners of the boxes. It just needed a quick wipe and it was ready to be loaded up. At least I tried to load ‘er up:

Chocolate too big, space too small. Either way, grrr.

And to think I just spent my month’s pension on little wrapped pieces of chocolate. Determined, I made it fit. But only one, and there are two of us counting down to Christmas.

Determined, I stogged one in.

Not so pretty now is it?

Not so appetizing once unwrapped.

Oh well, there are other kinds of little chocolates and these won’t go to waste.

But I do often have extraordinary thrift store kismet. Like the day I was wishing for a French curve (a drawing tool) and found one the next day in a shop for a dollar. Or the day I was going to explore the shops and Lance asked me to look out for a small table to use as a desk on the sunporch. I didn’t even make it to the store. There was a perfect sized computer desk sitting on the side of the road just down from the house with a paper saying FREE stuck to it. We really should start wishing for bigger and better things if the universe is going to make it that easy.

Just last week I was grinding a Chinese ink stick for a watercolour painting and had to use one of my white kitchen plates for a palette to dilute the black ink. Wasn’t happy about that; who knows what those ink sticks are really make of and who wants streaky plates. So I resolved to pick up a random white plate to be used as a palate the next time I was out. The universe, thank you very much, delivered. See for yourself.

My new white plate.

Now what could be more palette-like than that? I tells ya, I really should wish for bigger things. And so far it hasn’t disappointed.

Inked

Wait, what is that? Is that the face of Genghis Khan in my ink blot? What would Hermann Rorschach have to say about that?

Genghis, is that you?

Stay tuned for the twelve days of Christmas blogs entries starting on Dec 25. I’m working on larger writing projects right now so the Blog is sporadic but if you hang in there, you will find new posts from time to time.

Jon, in response to your comment, we have seen Anhingas a couple of times. If you search my blog for Paddling the Chaz you will find a picture there I believe.

Email comments to jgparsons@judypstickletrunk.com and I’ll add them in. The auto comment box is busted permanently.

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© Judy Parsons 2017