Something Purchased

O what is this thing I actually bought?  Well, most of it.

These jolly green lanterns sparked with insignificant yet sprightly white flowers pendul from what look like stems of bamboo. There was a mountainous display of them at Eastern Market yesterday and as the flower witch who tends the stall assured me, they will last for three weeks. $20. Three weeks. That's uh... $6 and change per week. A great deal more than the nothing I usually spend but really -- is this not a fantastic sight?

The bunch, which was sizable to begin with, is nestled in some leafy branches downed in Saturday night's storm -- a handy idea when you only have a little this and that and want to DO SOMETHING with it. In this case, the branches provide support for the slender stems and also amplify their fabulousness.

I have stuffed it all in the broken pedestal I blathered on about several posts ago. Since it's not engineered to hold water,  a sawed off plastic water bottle is stuck in the opening.

That is, when one's Prince has not discarded one's bottle, which is what happened on this particular occasion.



Before we flew off to Florida to visit the sisters last week, I did a cleaning. Along with making sure one has on reasonable underwear in case one gets hit by a truck on the way to wherever, I make sure my house is reasonably tidy in case the plane goes down and the house is crawled over by weeping survivors who will no doubt comment on my house keeping skills, ignoring the fact that a little mess is the mark of an interesting woman, or so insists Suzanne. 

The discarded detritus included ancient headphones that had lost the spongy pads, a shot pair of shoes, and a broken pair of sun glasses. Of course these were retrieved from the trash bin and put upon the kitchen counter with a note: "Did you mean to throw these way?"


Meanwhile, he had taken it upon himself to throw out the (somewhat wilted) greens that had previously filled the pedestal along with my plastic water bottle insert.

I ask you. Does he EVER throw out anything of his own? How is it that he so cavalierly feels he can decide what of mine is trash?


One (meaning him) would think this is not a big deal, in fact he offered words to that effect -- something about the multitude of plastic water bottles in the fridge. But! That was a special bottle. First I had to locate a tape measure and then I had to measure and then I had to write the measurement on a piece of paper and then I had to go to the market with the paper and the tape measure and measure water bottles to find the perfect fit.  And, as this happened more than a few weeks ago, I forgot which brand and what size I had settled on.

So I'm standing there, distraught, envisioning this fabulous bunch of stuff exploding behind the living room sofa. I stuck the bunch in another vase and proceeded to sulk.  

Thankfully, as it turned out, the water bottle had rolled under the radiator near the front door and so this crises was averted.*

Here we have a picture of most of the living room, which was adequate when we bought the house, too small as baby was raised, and is once again adequate. The brown cut velvet sofa is in its last gasp of summer, with two canvas drop cloths, one covering the frame and the other cut up and sewed to in-artfully cover the cushions (while I failed home ec, I did learn to thread a sewing machine and tromp on the peddle). Hiding the sewing sins, a bunch of old pillows with covers courtesy of T.J. Maxx.

I only point this out because I feel like it. 

The flower witch at the market says that right about when the covers are removed the orange Chinese lanterns will be in. Maybe I'll buy some.

*Dammit. The mourners would have found that bottle under the radiator and Who would be blamed I ask you?