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Teeny Tiny Sell-Out

Working the thrift shop

I did my first volunteer hours at the school thrift shop on Thursday night.  I've been dropping off clothing and other gear for years now, but this was the first time I'd been inside the shop.

I should have volunteered a long time ago, not only because it was more fun than I expected, but also because I wouldn't have been so doubtful of the quality of my donations.  I wouldn't have spent so much time worrying that the shop wouldn't want my clothing out-of-season.

Based on what I saw on Thursday, the clothes we donate must fly right out the door again.

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[Those were the sale-quality clothes I donated last autumn -- if by autumn we agree to accept "December 30th because I didn't want to miss the tax deadline" in the definition.]

New furniture

Here are some photos of the new furniture.

Wilder's new bed and old dresser, which used to be a changing table:

Wilder's bed, dresser, and windows

My paternal grandmother's dresser, saving a space for the desk Wilder did not receive:

Wilder's bookshelf and temporary dresser/desk

Elba's new desk and old dresser:

Elba's dresser and desk

Elba's new bed:

Elba's bookshelf and bed

Gemma's new bed:

Gemma's bookshelf and bed

Gemma's new desk and new dresser:

Gemma's desk and dresser

Answering the obvious question, the attic, where we keep most of the toys:

The attic

The kids chose their new bedroom paint colors from color cards I brought home the day we learned our furniture delivery date.  They wanted all their walls to be the darkest shade that I, the mean Mommy, painted only on the walls behind their beds.  Yes, Elba and Wilder did choose the same shade of blue.

When we moved in, every room in the house was painted with the paint you see in the attic -- a flat, right-out-of-the-can off-white paint from Big Box store.  It absorbs oils and dirt from the hands of people as they run past, whether they have contact with the walls or not.

I've painted the main-floor bathroom (see: dirty paint) and the laundry/back entry (see: exceedingly dirty paint) but that's it so far.

It sort of sucks that the kids now have the prettiest walls in the whole house.


In case it wasn't obvious, I bought the same furniture for all three kids -- three new desks with hutches, three new bedside tables, three new beds (for the last three years, the kids have slept on box spring/mattress combos held up by metal frames with hidden wheels designed to damage a person's toes), and a single dresser for Gemma's room.

I wanted to sing hallelujah yesterday morning when the new furniture arrived and I discovered that the finish I chose matched the nursery dressers in Wilder and Elba's rooms after all.

Such fond memories I have ...

... when I think back to the wild enthusiasm I felt, staying up until the wee hours to celebrate when this Clinton supporter won the presidency in 1992:

Former President Bill Clinton was in West Virginia on his wife's behalf. In Clarksburg, he called her a scrapper and contrasted her appeal among working-class voters with the elitists he said support Obama.

"The great divide in this country is not by race or even income, it's by those who think they are better than everyone else and think they should play by a different set of rules," he said. "In West Virginia and Arkansas, we know that when we see it."

Yes, alas, it's true.  Y'all who support Senator Clinton are salt of the earth.  And I'm just an asshole elitist who thinks I'm better than you.

I damn well know that I -- who will work like crazy to elect either Clinton or Obama come August -- am better than  Bill Clinton.  I haven't seen much these past few months to shake my basic dislike of Senator Clinton's political style, but I'm not out there trying to insult her many supporters, either.

What an asshole.