Good News, Bad News

The good news is that my brother came through his knee surgery fine and the surgeon said he really needed it done.  He was still in recovery when his wife called, so that's all I know except that apparently the hypnotist had also given him a cue to use for anxiety and he was really relaxed beforehand.  I am really relieved everything went well.  As we've aged, he's become my protective big brother even though he's seven years younger than me.

I was going to post a photo, sans face, his daughter e-mailed me this morning of him prepped for surgery and flashing the peace sign.  I kept cropping more and more of it out and decided there was no way he wouldn't consider it an invasion of privacy so, instead, I'm posting a photo I took yesterday evening about 6 p.m. during a frantic little snow storm we had...

...there was just a bit of snow on things this morning and it's gone now and we're looking at temps in the 60s by the weekend.

The bad news, and it's only semi-bad, is that after following up with the owner of Wild West Mercantile in Rollinsville by phone and getting what I thought was an enthusiastic response to his purchasing my things outright rather than taking them on consignment, he bought two items for $10--a small rusty coiled barbed wire wreath adorned with a rusty metal cowboy boot and a wooden sign saying, "Welcome to the Cabin."  He seemed possibly amenable, with the increased traffic he expects this summer, to purchasing items by lot for a set price and would leave it up to me to establish the price.  I don't give up easily, so shall continue to pursue this as a possible outlet.  He says he has received numerous requests to rent space in his store but also is not interested in doing that.  Onward and downward.

The issue now is that after picking up the first lot of stuff I had taken down there and coming back with almost all of the other stuff I'd loaded into my car Wednesday, I hardly have room in the car for Dixie.  Definitely going to have to address storage issues.  She is such a wonderful traveler and an all-around good sport.  I took her with me to Boulder and Longmont yesterday and she is a trooper.  Nothing fazes her.

By the way, when I went back to the Longmont Goodwill yesterday to return that painting on glass and get a couple of over-charges straightened out, I asked the manager on duty how many customers they had on Saturday for their grand opening and she said more than 2,000!  No wonder it was wild, and their inventory was really depleted even though they were making attempts to restock. 

I exchanged the damaged painting on glass for these dishes that seem to be Haviland, manufactured between 1876-1889 according to the mark.  The L is for Limoges.

...two dessert plates, two soup bowls and four berry dishes for $9.99 less my everyday senior discount of 10%.  These seem very sturdy and the gold trim is wonderfully thick and in excellent condition. I am always astonished items this old have made it, not just from their last home to the thrift shop, but through all the places they must have been after leaving the factory, without a single chip or crack.

If you thrift, is this one of the reasons?  Teddee