a peek inside the fishbowl

05 Jun, 2006

I bought lots of stuff, including someone’s family

Posted by andrea in: Oh! Things!

Saturday was the day I officially became one of those annoying garage sale people. You know the kind. The ones who show up early, wait expectedly and hassle about the sticker price? That’s me, minus the aggressive hassling. I find that looking sweet and a little clueless works a lot better.

Two churches down the street were hosting an indoor yard sale on Saturday. Somehow I got there early and had to join the huddled masses in front of the still-locked doors. In the rain, no less. They all looked like die-hards, and there I was, feeling out of place and totally stupid.

Sure enough, as soon as the doors were unlocked they all made a mad rush for the goods. I had no choice but to rush as well. Hey, I was swept up in the crowd.

I didn’t find much, but I did walk away with this:

perfection.jpg

Raise your hands if you played this game when you were little and never yelped in surprise at the big bang the end of the game.

At the second church sale I found a bird-shaped cookie cutter, some dice, an old book about fish (for art/collage purposes), a sugar jar (now ready to accept cut flowers):

sugar.jpg

… and I also found some pretty linens. I stood in line, holding all this stuff awkwardly, and waited for the final tally. Most of the linen pieces were marked 50 cents.

Hmmm, “said the lady. “Let’s see now…” she counted and mumbled a bit.

“How about 70 cents?” she asked. Judging by the tone of her voice she might as well have appended: “is that okay?” at the end of her question.
“How about we round it up to a dollar?” I replied.
She touched my arm. “Alright then,” she said. “After all, it is for the church.”

linens_all.jpg

linen-fave1.jpg

linen-fave.jpg

The other purchase I made was at a private garage sale up the street.

There were three albums, two padded ones and one large scrapbook type album with an intricate and colourful cover. The first was very worn, with brown upholstery on the cover. It contained 25 very old photos. The second was blue with a very pretty blue and white floral cover (also upholstered) but only contained a handful of photos. The third, the scrapbook, was wall to wall full of poems that someone had cut out of the newspaper.

I felt sad about the photo albums. This was someone’s family. These were living and breathing human beings: mothers, fathers, aunts and uncles, brothers and sisters. There was a history here. And yet they were being sold on a rickety table among dozens of useless trinkets.

Each album was marked with a $20.00 sticker. I only had $25.00 in my pocket. I didn’t have the heart to haggle. I chose the brown one. And the fellow threw in an extra photo:

photo-extra.jpg

Please excuse the fantastically wrinkled tablecloth. My mother will faint when she finds out I didn’t iron it before putting it out on the table. Here’s the album itself:

oldphoto-album.jpg

oldphoto-paper.jpg

oldphoto-lady.jpg

oldphoto-doublespread.jpg

This is my favourite of the bunch. This is the only photo in which the cheeks were rouged. How ironic. The people look so stern.

oldphoto-rouged.jpg

And that’s about it for the more interesting second-hand purchases.

Next post: I will tell you about our Sunday visit to “the moth” (as Sarah calls it).


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The Obligatory Blurb

My name is Andrea and I live in the Westboro area of Ottawa with my husband Mark and our dog Piper who is kind of a big deal on Instagram. We also have two human offspring: Emma (24) and Sarah (22). During the day I work as a writer at the Royal Ottawa Mental Health Centre. I am a longtime Ottawa blogger and I've occupied this little corner of the WWW since 1999. The Fishbowl is my whiteboard, water cooler, and journal, all rolled into one. I'm passionate about healthy living, arts and culture, travel, great gear, good food, and sharing the best of Ottawa. I also love vegetables, photography, gadgets, and great design.

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