Grab the Lapels

Sunday Lowdown #228

THIS WEEK IN REFLECTION

It’s summer, and for Nick and me, that means it’s garage sale season! I love it so much because I have a talent for looking at a thing and seeing a totally different use for it. For example, instead of having your average toothbrush holder, which goes on the counter and exposes your toothbrushes to the toilet particles that enter the air when you flush, I have one of those little glass dishes partitioned into three sections for pickles and olives. Put this in a drawer in your bathroom to protect your toothbrush, plus, the dividers keep your bristles from touching anything. And it’s pretty and easy to wash.

This week, my biggest find was someone’s grandmother’s wooden ironing board that a friend painted flowers on years later for $2.50. I could see it in Kitty’s room as part of a cat superhighway, as Jackson Galaxy calls it. At another garage sale I found a stool for $2.50 that could lead as a step to the ironing board. And then rekerjiggering Kitty’s room and . . .

I had to move a small table, so I put her bed on it. She can be lazy and look out the window. Then, hop to the table, to the chair, to the stool, to the ironing board! I moved the bench to the other side, so she can lay comfy and look out the other way. She has lots of Kitty TV.

Also, Kitty got her own pets this week. I had some gravel and thought, “That’s practically an aquarium” and decided Kitty needed friends. I went to Goodwill for ideas and got one of those glass jars with the spigot that people usually put iced tea or lemonade in and had Nick cut a circle in the top. I used an onion bag to keep Kitty’s feet out of the water. Got the gravel, added little plastic plant, and . . .

Kitty pets! I love that the spigot makes it easy to release half the water and add more. However, I was completely unaware that it is a myth that goldfish can just live in a glass bowl. Why are they swimming at the top and gasping for air like they are drowning?!? Oh, because they’re suffocating. We got a little $6 aerator and now it’s all good.

Back to garage sales. Sometimes I see tired-looking mothers selling table loads of baby clothes. Sometimes, it’s kids and their fifty pairs of shoes (why do children have so many shoes now??). Then there is the sad one: the My Mother Just Died garage sale. At one such sale I saw a plant and asked how much. The lady said just take it, that her mother owned it for a LONG time and kept it on a sewing machine. The plant only moved when her mother sewed. And now she, the daughter, was just killing it.

So, I put it in my trunk and on the way home the plant fell out of the pot! Well, that solved the mystery for me. Likely, the daughter was overwatering the thing, causing the dirt to compact and pull down, exposing more plant root. We got it home, and after inspecting the dirt, I realized I basically had a pot of mud. So, I laid it out on a tarp to dry in the sun and waited. Just before sundown I repotted the My Mother Just Died plant, spreading the individual plants (there are two, I now see!) out a little bit for better room to grow.

I found the blue glass plate to put it on at another sale. Looking around our house, I realized just how few things we’ve bought brand new, and that’s something I’m proud of. I don’t see new things. asa sign of wealth or class; I see my things, repurposed or otherwise, as creative and reducing waste on this planet.

#20booksofsummer

Since not all of my books are appropriate to review on Grab the Lapels (i.e., I have several authors who identify as men on my list), I’ll give you a couple of sentences of each that I read.

#1 Rants from the Hill: On Packrats, Bobcats, Wildfires, Curmudgeons, a Drunken Mary Kay Lady, and Other Encounters with the Wild in the High Desert by Michael P. Branch — not only was this book hilarious, but Branch knows how to bring his essays full circle so they hit you emotionally, too. Oh, and the drunk Mary Kay lady essay was amazing.

#2 Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut — check out this review by Lou @ Lou Lou Reads (four of us did a buddy read).

#3 Pontypool Changes Everything by Tony Burgess — a truly wild ride with some of the best horror descriptions I’ve ever read. But the author’s imagining of the zombie plague (that the zombie infect spreads through words and affects language) throws some people off, as the word plague matches the writing sometimes. While half of my Huntsville Horror book club folks hated it or DNF’d, I truly loved it.

#4 Man, Fuck This House by Brian Asman — I thought it was going to be a basic haunted house novel, but then it took a left turn and I had no clue what would happen next! A surprising addition to the haunted house genre.

THIS WEEK’S BLOG POST

Thanks again to Michelle Embree for writing such an amazing book, the kind that I swear can only come from a human who is young and fearless. And, thanks for her interview! I’m glad you guys like the interviews, and I hope you seek out a copy of Manstealing for Fat Girls. There are used copies for sale online.

NEXT WEEK’S BLOG POST

My backlog of reviews dried up, and now I’m behind due to school. However, this calendar conundrum provided a nudge for me to create a Pride Month post in which I share books I’ve reviewed at Grab the Lapels that have LGBTQ characters, or LGBTQ authors I’ve interviewed or read.

Photo by Alexander Grey on Pexels.com

BOOKS I BOUGHT

Books I paid for (that are not textbooks) since January 2023:

  • True-Biz by Sara Novic ($1)
  • Rants from the Hill by Michael P. Branch ($1)
  • The Mammoth Book of Haunted House Stories, edited by Peter Haining ($1.50)
  • What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day by Pearl Cleage ($0.79)
  • Ecology of a Cracker Childhood by Janisse Ray ($0.79)
  • All of Me by Venise Berry ($0.99)
  • Planet Earth books from Time Life ($4.00 for 7 books)
  • North American Wildlife by Susan J. Wernert ($0.50)
  • Your Dog is in The Bar by Celia Rensch Day ($o.79)
  • Sybil by Flora Rheta Schreiber ($0.50)
    • Update: I have now recycled this book. I just realized 100 pages are missing because it’s so old the glue came off the spine.
  • Witches’ Brew, edited by Alfred Hitchcock ($0.50)
  • At Wit’s End by Erma Bombeck ($0.50)

Running Cost: $12.86

BOOKS ADDED TO THE TBR PILE

Thanks to Anne @ I’ve Read This and Sue @ Whispering Gums for their recommendations this week!

Lessons In Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus CR: Doubleday
WHAT are these rats plotting??

30 comments

  1. I love your garage sale finds! I had no idea that goldfish needed an aerator either LOL. Does Kitty like the fish? And man, that snake plant looks so overwatered! I have a small snake plant at work, and I think someone had been watering it other than myself, so I had to put a sign on it “please don’t water me” haha

    I hope you like the Dad radio host book, it’s from a small press here in Canada (one I used to work at a long time ago) so I love that it’s audience is widening 😉

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    • I see Kitty watching the fish, and on the first day she tried to put her foot in there. She’s not actively sitting there watching them, but she can definitely see the fish now that her bed is raised. We didn’t name them or anything because they are “feeder fish” (or what Nick calls “edi-buddies,” meaning edible buddies) for larger fish and cost 25 cents.

      Gregor Craigie had other books at my library, but I requested this new one and they bought it.

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  2. Love your garage sale stories and your ability to repurpose. I particularly love that painted ironing board and the My Mother Just Died plant. I hope to see pics of it thriving in the future. I do love old stuff myself. Nearly all my crockery/china, serving dishes and glasses are gifts or inherited. I could not see them go when cleaning out relatives homes and they mean so much more than things I might buy myself, even if they are a bit odd and eclectic!

    I’m not a very creative re-purposer but I do do things like use favourite excess-to-requirement mugs as pen holders, and the like. I keep any packaging (boxes, bags, paper, bubble wrap) for all sorts of uses though in my downsizing I did find I had way more than I need – but I still kept all the best ones because you never know.

    Really enjoyed this post. I hope you share more garage sale adventures, with pics.

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    • Thank you, Sue! I’m glad you enjoyed the post. I think repurposing, whether it’s something you buy used or your own things, is great. A lot of what I think I need is plastic, such as pen holders, organizers, etc., so if you have something ceramic or wood that you can repurpose, I think you’re making a difference.

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      • Yes, good point … we use Apple products and they make the best white boxes. It can take time to gently remove the stuck-in innards but once you do you have sturdy little trays for all sorts of things like stationary items or jewellery or even pharmaceuticals (like my skin ointment stash). I wish I needed more Apple products but one laptop, one tablet and a phone is about it – haha. Those boxes do last though and I grab Mr Gums’ too!

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  3. I always enjoy reading about your garage sale adventures. Hooray for rescuing that snake plant! Lessons in Chemistry has a wonderful not cheesy dog character, and this is coming from someone who avoids books with animals in them.

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  4. Well done on the garage saling! The ironing board is amazing. And I love the creative goldfish tank! James once took the inside out of an old console TV and instead of a TV screen, inserted a fish tank. It was awesome! He was managing his brother’s tropical fish store at the time and sold it for a nice price. Also, nice job rescuing the snake plant!

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    • I’ve seen those fish tank TVs on…well, I think on TV, lol. I didn’t realize James is (was?) so crafty. Does he still do special projects like that?

      Okay, I now realize my Dead Mother’s Plant is a snake plant. Good to know. I mostly grow plants intuitively, and, bizarrely, that has always worked out for me. The only plants for which I looked up a bunch of info and proceeded to kill are succulents. It used to be we’d get some sage advice from a friend before the internet really mattered, and we held that info like it was 100% truth for the next 25 years.

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      • The TV fish tank was back in the early 90s when we still lived in California. These days most of James’s craftiness happens in the kitchen, but we did get a big rain barrel free from our Buy Nothing group but it lacked all the spigots, etc, and our gutter downspout didn’t really fit into the tiny hole on top of the barrel, so James did a brilliant MacGyver job of it with the tubing from and old wet-dry vac and some duck tape for the downspout. We bought a spigot and the barrel hole was too big so–my idea and James’s execution–we used the semi-hard plastic the spigot came in, screwed the spigot into the plastic, and then fitted it all into the barrel hole and glued and duck taped it. Now it just has to rain so we can figure out if it all works! I should totally blog about this sometime 😀

        I used to kill succulents all the time too. But a few years ago a friend gave me one as a gift, and after almost killing it, I figured it out and it continues to thrive and have babies. I need to find a bigger pot for it. Perhaps I will take a page from your book and see if I can find something unusual.

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  5. I love that ironing board! In fact you have inspired me – I need to buy a new ironing board (mine comes apart every time I try to fold it so I have to leave it up, taking up room I don’t really have), so maybe I should look out for an old wooden one in the local second-hand furniture places. I bet they’re more robust than my one!

    I’m glad you were able to rescue the plant – it’s lovely to be able to care for something that someone else has loved, even if the context is very sad. I hope it now thrives once again!

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    • I’ve seen so many ironing boards at used items stores and garage sales. It makes me wonder if people just don’t iron anymore. Hence, I would suggest looking for a used one. If anything, you’ll get a functioning ironing board for a lot less. Nick has one we found at Goodwill that he uses for his work clothes.

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  6. You’ve reminded me of back when we had 2 goldfish for a while (mmm.. maybe nearly 40 years ago). The kids named them grandma and pop. Luckily the real grandma and pop lasted a bit longer than the fish did.
    I was going to say pet mice were my favourite – and wouldn’t they keep the cat occupied! – which reminds me we kept them in the vacant fish tank.

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    • Am I to understand that perhaps this was the bowl of death, and you kept putting small animals in it? HA! Not funny, but a little funny. We only know what we know. I did not know that in order to aerate the fishbowl, I could just point a fan at it, which tells me I have zero clue how water or air work.

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  7. I love second-hand stuff, I have a few things in my house I’ve had since I was a child (a wardrobe, a chest of drawers and a bookshelf) and then other things I’ve bought in second-hand and junk shops. I love all your re-purposing! And I second the recommendation for Lessons in Chemistry and I also dislike books with animals in!

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  8. Kitty’s room is looking awesome! I love the stories of your garage sale finds. I don’t do much garage sale hunting but we do a lot of thrift store shopping and that makes me happy. If we didn’t get it as a wedding gift, we probably got it secondhand and that makes me happy.

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    • I’ve noticed that second-hand stores around here are getting more expensive than garage sales. I was recently recommending to a friend to go to garage sales late on Saturday or on Sunday because most folks will say “just name your price!” or put up a 50% off everything sign.

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      • Thrift store in the city are getting ridiculous! When I thrift there I’m a lot more discerning about what I look for. Fortunately our local thrift shops are still really reasonable and since we’re such a tourist town we get a good amount of turnover. I should try and check out some garage sales this summer!

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          • I basically get all clothes for the girls from the thrift store or as hand-me-downs. And then we pass their stuff on to friends when they outgrow it. The one exception is running shoes!

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            • Kids and their shoes! I read something recently about girl shoes not being as durable as boy shoes because girls don’t play as rough. I wonder if that is true. And I apologize; I’m behind on responding to comments and reading blog posts.

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              • Oh, I have heard that about other clothes but not shoes. That sucks if true. I’ve been told that since shoes end up moulding to their wearer’s feet it’s best to not get something like running shoes second hand.

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  9. Repurposing is great! I love the ironing board. I somehow thought people used to iron on a table, but an ironing board in wood totally makes sense. There are very few garage sales here, but I’m a devoted patron of the “buy nothing” local group, especially to empty my cupboards!

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    • Some folks buy a hot pad thingy and iron on tables. I’m not into ironing, but my husband has to because his work shirts get wrinkly. Also, and this is a cliche at this point, they don’t make things like they used to. Granny’s wooden ironing board is a brick.

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