I was going to add to the recap yesterday, but then Meghan sent me this link and poking around the rest of the site pretty much sucked up my afternoon – especially after we discovered a photo of a chainmail-wearing teddy bear named “Sir Snuffles of Gund.” Eek!
We did take a little while to get out of the house, partly because I showed up late and partly because we couldn’t help sitting around watching Meghan and Leslie’s dogs go nuts together for a while. Our first stop was the cash machine, near which we saw this … art project? Whatever it was, we liked it enough to take a picture.
Leslie and Meghan talked about the Downsizing Sale. I was poking around in the stuff outside for a while and kept being surprised at not finding much. Eventually I did pick up a huge plastic/tupperware type thing for holding rolls of wrapping paper. Owning this makes me feel a little bit like a demented housewife who gets way too excited about sales at Target, but it’s actually really useful for getting my random rolls of wrapping paper (mostly thrifted/yard-saled) out of the way. There were some rolls of paper included, which were mostly cute (a few will be donated or featured at the yard sale we’ll eventually get to have).
After quite a while in the house we were just about ready to go when I discovered a whole big office room in the basement that none of us had even noticed before. There were three huge bookcases filled with books and at first I wasn’t sure if they were for sale, but as Meghan mentioned, everything was for sale. I asked how much and the woman said “Most of them are a dollar each, but if you find something you want I’ll probably sell it to you for like a quarter. Except for some of the first editions are more.” I started looking through and ended up with a huge pile. Everything from Dante’s Inferno to weird fiction authors I’d never heard of before to the Tibetan Book Of The Dead to an exhibition book from some recent group art show in Brooklyn. Meghan found the aforementioned Last of the Mohicans “stash book” (looks like a hardcover book but is really hollowed out to store … stuff) and then found another one which she handed over to me, made to look like Homer’s Odyssey!
I figured that I had enough (even though I also knew if I made a second pass through the shelves I’d probably find more) and went upstairs to find out how much my stack would be. The woman having the sale pulled out two first editions I’d grabbed kind of randomly just because they looked interesting (Seamus Heaney and a facsimile edition of a Yeats book) and said those would be more. Eventually she said $30 for the whole pile – $10 each for the first eds. and $10 for the rest (about 15 books). I told her I’d do the stack but even though I was sure $10 each was a good deal on the other two, it was too much for me. She said “But I really want you to read them!” and came down to $5 each, on the condition that I promise to read them. So now I got some reading to do, along with the whole other stack of books, along with my already too-big waiting-to-be-read pile at home. Yes, I have a bit of a problem (and as Meghan says, it’s hard not to pick up books at sale when they are so cheap compared to buying them new, or even used!).
The rest of the sales weren’t as good, and the rain was really starting to come down, which made shopping a bit more difficult. I was feeling sorry for the thrift stores who were probably going to get a lot of soggy donations later (some people didn’t have their stuff even remotely covered; others had tarps laid over here and there). Most of the rest of my purchases were for my kid: a pair of red and white checkerboard Vans (too big, but she’ll grow), an amazing kids’ vintage bowling shirt, a big tub of Legos, and of course – another copy of Corduroy, this time with all pages intact. Yes!
The only other notable item to report is that Meghan purchased a rice krispie treat that didn’t suck. Oh, and that thanks to Leslie’s Mad Libs, I probably won’t be able to stop myself from singing “Jingle Boobs” a few times next holiday season.
