Antiques + Ghosts: There’s Something Off-Key Here

A real-life honest-to-goodness made-me-smile conversation…

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“I ain’t afraid of no ghost.”

I met a friend for drinks and dinner.  She got talking about her part-time business, which is selling antiques.

She scouts around local Goodwills and garage sales, then takes her finds, tidies them up a bit, and puts them in a rented booth in an antique mall.  She’s done this for years, turning a modest profit on her efforts.

My friend told me that a ghost is now haunting her booth.  This ghost, who isn’t pleased with the way my friend is merchandising her hats and jewelry, moves items around within the booth.

And the ghost has gone so far as to break an item.  Bad ghost!

Come to find out this problem is part of dealing in antiques.  [Read more here.]  According to my friend you learn to accept the fact that as long as you have an item a ghost has attached itself to, you’re going to have difficulties.

Once the item is gone, either through a sale or by intentional destruction, the ghost leaves you alone.

The trick, of course, is figuring out which item is the one that has brought the ghost to your booth.

So far my friend has not been able to do this on her own, so she’s enlisted the help of other antique booth renters, asking them to keep an eye on her things, in case they see a ghost lurking about.

As one is wont to do, apparently, in antique malls.

Who knew?

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An entertaining ditty for your listening pleasure!

Orange Sky At Night, Tomatoes Take Fright

A SHORT STORY

One day the Lady of the House carefully planted a few pots of herbs + one pot of small patio tomatoes.  There was joy in the land.

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The sky was blue above, forsooth.

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Cardinals, sitting in trees, shooketh their tail feathers.

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Cute garden tags proclaimed what was in each herb pot.

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However, one evening a magical thunderstorm rolled through the land turning the sky to a weird shade of orange, creating a beautiful unexpected rainbow.  Things had changed.

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At first, the Lady of the House was charmed by the rainbow, until she saw that the storm winds had snapped her tomato plant in two.  She was sad.

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But the Lady of the House, being ever hopeful and raised on fairy tales, put the little green tomatoes in a dish on the kitchen table near a sunny window.

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Where, alas & alack, despite the Lady of the House’s tender care, the little tomatoes remain green and inedible to this day.

THE END

A Recipe For A Heart-y Dinner, So To Speak

Do you want to be happier about where you are in life?

Then I recommend you read the following recipe which will quickly make you incredibly content to be living in the modern world.

The recipe is from The Something-Different Dish, by Marion Harris Neil, Cookery Editor of Ladies’ Home Journal and author of this cookbook, published in 1915, a mere 101 years ago.

[She also wrote The Story of Crisco around this time. But I digress…]

Please keep in mind that a respectable cookbook published this recipe because [presumably?] people were eating things like this.

That they made at home.

Not that long ago.

So considering this reality, might I suggest that when you start to feel down about your life here in 2016, you need to remember that things could be a lot worse.

You could be eating Love In Disguise for dinner tonight.  😉

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A Sure Sign Of Summer: Kettle Corn For Breakfast

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Tiny blue vase, handmade, purchased from potter at festival, filled with a daisy + rosemary from our garden, sitting on the kitchen counter… and taking up much less space than the bag of kettle corn, also purchased at festival.

I know for sure that it’s summertime because I’m eating kettle corn for breakfast.

[Don’t judge.]

Last weekend we went to the first festival of the season where we purchased a bag of kettle corn.

Said bag, which is too large to fit on the pantry shelf, is now sitting on the kitchen counter near the new vase featured in the photo.

[We bought the “small” bag of kettle corn, btw.] 

From what I can tell, all festivals around here are required by law to have at least one kettle corn booth wherein they make the stuff fresh before your very eyes.

Then the kettle corn makers are required to give you a free sample of it right when you’re tired from walking around the festival, but not hungry because you just ate something filling at the previous food booth.

[I’m a sucker for a pulled pork sandwich with a speciality BBQ sauce.]

So, you decide to buy a bag of the kettle corn to take home with you because you know you like it.  And because this is a festival that helps some small town OR civic organization OR large church make money that they use to help the needy.

[The cynic in me says the festival might be helping itself first before the needy, but whatevs.]

And that, my gentle readers, is how I know it is summer.  I’ve got popcorn kernel residue stuck in my teeth before 8:00 a.m. and I’ve helped the needy.  😉

HOW DO YOU KNOW FOR SURE THAT IT’S SUMMERTIME WHERE YOU LIVE?