Shell I Tell You A Story?

Yesterday started out with a freaking bang when this little turd...

brought in a fast-moving mouse.  Mike and I moved heaven and earth trying to catch it.  It was something on the order of Woody Allen killing the spider in Annie Hall's bathroom.  (Tell me you're old enough to remember Annie Hall.)  Smitty was no help at all.

In the process, a display of seashells in a large fish-bowl type flower vase got broken.  The vase was nothing special...just a cheap one that contained a large flower arrangement from many years ago.  (Even that's a story:  Mike had to go to Germany to sell a product to the Germans, and it just happened that the meeting took place on Thanksgiving Day.  Of course, Thanksgiving means nothing to the Germans, and so Mike's company sent him off to Germany rather than letting him spend Thanksgiving with his wife and children.  I was a good sport about it, but the company sent me the biggest flower arrangement you've ever seen.  Thus, the large fish bowl vase.)  

So, anyway...it got broken in yesterday's mouse debacle.  And we never did catch the mouse.  It's running loose somewhere at this point.  I wasn't upset about the vase, but I still wanted something to hold my seashells.  They are beautiful.  I've had them for a long time.  My dad picked them up on the beaches when he was stationed in the South Pacific during World War II, and so they have some sentimental value, let alone their aesthetic appeal.

Enter Goodwill.  I knew I could find something appropriate at Goodwill, and it gave me an excuse and a purpose for visiting the new Goodwill store in our town.  You remember...the one where people slept out overnight waiting for the grand opening.  And HERE IT IS!

And let me tell you.  This is no ordinary Goodwill.  It even has two parking spaces for electric cars...which just seems too hip and wrong somehow.

Here's how it looks on the inside.  I couldn't help wondering if those people who slept out overnight had expected something with a little more panache.

And check out the "Save 50%" color of the day:  Blue.  This will become important in a minute or so...depending on how fast you read.

So I always look for jeans when I go to Goodwill.  And this brings me to my latest pet peeve:  Have you noticed the "new and improved" denim they're using on jeans lately?  The stuff that feels like it will have holes in it after approximately two wearings?  Who do they think they're kidding anyway?  But there I go, being tangential again.  Anyway, I found a couple of pairs of jeans to try on, and then I looked around at the other miscellaneous junk treasures to be had at Goodwill.  

There was a lot of cool stuff.  I always look at the storage bins and baskets.  Goodwill is the only place to buy baskets, in my humble opinion.  And while I was perusing all that wonderful stuff, they announced that "seniors" (the definition of which describes me perfectly) would get a 10% discount that day.  About then, I started feeling pretty smug about having been born during the 14th Century.  It's one of my few thrills in life at this point.  Sadly, I didn't find any kind of container that would hold my seashells, and so I went off to try on my jeans.

When I got to the fitting rooms, what to my wondering eyes should appear but a vase exactly like the one that was broken.  Exactly!!  It was a whopping $2.99!  But that's not all.  It had a blue tag, meaning it was 50% off!  So I got the vase for $1.49!  I LOVE GOODWILL!  

And there it is!  It's almost as if it never happened!  Except for the mouse running loose in the house somewhere.

So I finished my stitchery yesterday.  Hm.

As I look at this, I'm thinking about adding this phrase to the bottom:  "Unless one of them is Smitty."

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