The above title has nothing to do with being bored. Far from it. It’s more about unrest, or restlessness, or whatever descriptive you want to elect. I’m sleeping and still tired. It’s been, as I told my older daughter tonight, a bizarre, yo-yo month so far.
I got one piece of unexpected news at work – I started to say stupendous, and I’m still unsure if that’s an exaggeration. I didn’t expect to see a raise this year, for a lot of reasons. Suffice to say, my expectations were a bit off.
G and I hadn’t been able to get out on our weekend yard-sale excursions for a while and assumed that the heat would put an end to the season for the sales. Not so, as it turned out. In fact, the only change has been that people are selling for cheaper just to get in out of the heat earlier. I can’t remember how many stops we made where we scored what we already thought were stupendous bargains – and the seller, in a hurry to pack things in, gave us several additional items. We didn’t ask – they were offered, and we accepted. Free goodies included a delightfully garish pitcher with lid, some wooden floating shelves, and God knows what else. I have lost track. And all this over the course of less than two weeks.
Tonight G scored something minor from Freecycle. Along the way we passed a growing stack of discards at the curb and stopped to ask. We ended up leaving with a car literally FULL of wood: furniture-grade plywood, high-end wood trim, solid oak shelving, ash shelving – all unfinished stuff. G’s been chomping at the bit to do some carpentry projects but we couldn’t afford to buy the wood. Looks like that won’t be an issue for a while, heh. Having a workshop area in the garage was a BIG deal to him when we bought the house.
G comes from a line of carpenters. His grandfather hand-made furniture for a living; turned, inlaid, dovetailed, all the quality things you read about in quality antiques but are extinct in the era of Wal Mart. G’s father was also a furniture maker, and G is no slouch in that department either. He was ecstatic to score what was basically a few hundred bucks’ worth of materials for free. It’s been pretty well coordinated, too: this weekend one of our yard-sale scores was a collection of nails and other similar carpentry essentials. Since we’ve been here, he’s gradually accumulated most of the tools he needs to make almost anything he wants to build. The one tool he’s still seeking is a table saw. I’d say it’s still out of reach, but considering the insanely expensive stuff we’ve been given lately, who knows?
For what it’s worth, it hasn’t been about us being greedy. The wood came from people who were moving and were planning to haul it to the dump. They were overjoyed they wouldn’t have to pay to drop perfectly good materials to be buried amid trash. A genuinely beautiful, working electric fireplace (!) and several other goodies came from a neighbor where G’s been helping her off and on for a while, and he did a lot to help her move. He didn’t ask for recompense: he just thought he was being a good neighbor. She had things she couldn’t take and was more than happy to offer them to us.
A lot of other freebies, as I described before, came when we stopped at yard sales and would buy one or two small items and be offered umpteen more for free.
That in itself is nice. What’s better is that the things we’re being given have been things we needed or wanted but figured they were out of reach for foreseeable future.
Lots and lots of VERY good things, unexpected things.
There have been some mixed-bag issues too. My body’s giving me grief, more than usual. I need to get a lot of things done and it’s all I can do to keep going at all. Not going to go into details; it’s repetitive and unproductive.
There’s also a distinct lack of time. I should’ve been asleep 2-1/2 hours ago. Heading that way now!