The Post I Should Have Written Friday

Friday kind of rocked. 

I woke up before Nathan and worked on my freelance project for about an hour. 

Later, after I took Nathan to camp, I went to an estate sale.   See, awhile back I became interested in Depression Glass.  Essentially, Depression Glass is glassware that was mass-produced and sold very inexpensively around the time of the Great Depression.  What I find interesting about Depression Glass is that it is one of those situations where an everyday object has such interesting historical forces behind it.  (Bill Bryson's At Home is an entire book about the historical factors behind everyday household objects.)  See, around the time of the Great Depression, techniques in mass-production of glassware had just been discovered.  The new techniques allowed companies to produce and sell pretty glass objects to people at lower prices, which of course was all most people could afford during the Great Depression. 

More interestingly, to me at least, was that pieces of this glassware were given out for free in some of the most unlikely places.  Like, the movie theater would have "dish night," and you would get a free dish for buying a movie ticket.  This giveaway was, of course, designed to entice people to come into the movie theater, which seems sort of absurd by today's standards because these days people wouldn't go to the movies just to get a free dish.  We all have enough dishes now.  Also, I can't help but think that the free giveaway plate at today's movie theaters would be some hideous plastic thing with a licensed character on it. 

But the dishes given away at movie theaters during the Depression were really pretty, and seemingly totally incongruous with the entertainment industry.  You could also get free dishes inside of oatmeal boxes, which also seems really bizarre because wouldn't the dish take up a lot of room in there?  Apparently boxes of soap flakes also sometimes contained dishes.  Obviously oatmeal and soap are both products that serve as useful cushioning to protect fragile glassware, although I have to imagine that there was still the occasional breakage, leaving the consumer with a box of oatmeal mixed with broken glass.  And as an extra added bonus, the glass likely contained lead. 

Anyway, I find Depression Glass very interesting.  Also I just really like to collect items that remind me of mental health conditions I suffer from.  You know, Depression glass?  Next up I hope to start collecting Anxiety Rugs. 

So ... I signed up awhile back to get email alerts from EstateSales.net whenever there's an estate sale near me.  Now, I don't really go out of my way to go to estate sales, because most of the time they are filled with unwanted crap, and they are a little bit sad.  It's just kind of disconcerting to look over the sum-total of a person's earthly belongings, imagining that, like yourself, that person spent a huge percentage of her time procuring all these needed items, only to have a bunch of strangers go through her house after she died and buy all that stuff for fifty cents.  And it's not the sale of collectibles or large items like furniture that make me sad.  You could imagine the person wanting to sell the furniture while she was still alive, because people sell furniture all the time.  And you could imagine the person taking great pride in finding an interested owner for her precious collectibles.  But what makes me sad is people pouring through all the deceased person's kitchen items or bed linens, items that have no real monetary value, and are no longer useful to the original owner.  It's just too much of a reminder that a person has ceased to exist on earth.

My point is, I have mixed feelings about estate sales, which means I will not go more than ten minutes out of my way to get to one.  But Friday's sale was only a block from my house, so I went to it.  I did end up buying two sweaters, which was hard because if there's anything in the world that underscores the pointlessness of acquiring earthly belongings, it's a dead person's clothing.  But as I am still on earth, and I'd like to do my part to preserve this earth for future generations, buying secondhand seems like the green thing to do. 

But the real excitement was the Depression Glass haul I got at the sale:

Now, I happen to have a Depression Glass identification guidebook, which was thoughtfully given to me by my brother Brian and sister-in-law Laurin (parents of recently-born Samuel).  Using the guidebook, I was quickly able to identify the oval plate and two glasses in the foreground as the Poinsettia pattern produced by the Jeannette Glass Co. from 1931 to 1935.  I was also pleasantly surprised to find out that the sherbet glasses, as they are called (apparently sherbet was very popular during the 1930s, judging from the number of companies that made sherbet glasses in that era) have a market value of $14 each, and that the platter is valued at $20.  That means the set is worth $48, whereas I bought it for $5.  Score!  Except, as my husband reminds me, something is only worth a certain amount if you want to sell it and you have a buyer willing to pay you that amount.  I have no intention of selling the items right now, but it's just kind of fun to think that you got something that's worth more than you paid for it. 

Did I ever tell you that I once thought that Leia was such an item?  I adopted Leia from the animal shelter, figuring she was just your standard garden-variety cat.  In fact, I sort of thought her markings were a little bit weird, and were possibly the type of irregular markings not prized by cat show people.  Of course, I'm not a cat show person, and I love my little furry girl to death.  Anyway, on our drive from California to Chicago in 2004, during which Leia was a surprisingly well-behaved car passenger, we at one point stumbled upon a cat-themed gift shop in Colorado.  The owner of the shop had a couple of live cats in the store, so we figured we'd give Leia a change of scenery (like she cared) and bring her into the store, too.  The owner of the shop asked us if Leia was a Turkish Van, a type of cat that typically has Leia's pattern of markings and also has webbed feet.  I was like, Wow, Leia is some kind of fancy cat!  It's like buying something at a garage sale for a quarter and finding out it's worth hundreds of dollars! 

So, when we finally got to Chicago and had access to an Internet connection (this being before the days when I had an Internet connection on my phone), I looked up Turkish Vans.  The first thing I found on some kind of Turkish Van appreciation website was, "Your cat from the animal shelter is not a Turkish Van."  Like, seriously, that was almost the exact verbage.  It turns out that Leia has what's called a "van pattern," named after the Turkish Van, but she is not a Turkish Van.  The discovery of this fact did nothing to diminish my undying love for her.  And, as I said, value only becomes a consideration in a buying/selling situation, and I wasn't going to sell Leia.

"Go ahead and try to sell me on ebay!  Please specify that the buyer needs to be willing to serve me unlimited cat food and have vomit-resistant flooring."

So, going back to my original topic, which was the identification and valuing of Depression Glass, I could not identify these ten little glasses I also bought:

For all I know, they could have been purchased at Target five years ago.  (Oh, when will the Antiques Roadshow come to town and clarify this issue for me?)  I'm thinking they might actually be antiques, though, because they aren't really the size and shape of glasses that are useful for the consumption of anything we eat or drink today.  Well, actually, there are several similar ones in the book called cocktail glasses, and we do drink cocktails today, but not out of glasses like that.  And I hope they are antiques, because the set of 10 glasses was $20.  But there was something about them that made me just have to have them, and I reasoned that it was better to reward myself with pretty glassware than with ice cream.  

Which brings me to my Weight Watchers weigh-in, which was next on my agenda for Friday.  I lost 4 pounds!  Now, I had registered gains the previous two weeks, and according to the online weight tracker my three-week net loss was only 0.8 pounds.  But I'm going in a downward direction, so that's good, right?  

The other exciting development on Friday was that the painter came and I committed to paint colors for the office.  I knew I wanted purple, but you know how it is with paint chips: there are like 8,000 varieties of purple.  Eventually I decided the color Wisteria was meant to be, because I used to live in a town whose claim to fame was having the world's largest wisteria vine.  After choosing Wisteria I picked the next shade up, Brave Purple, as the color for one accent wall.  The room in this picture is not an actual room in my house, but I picked it from the Sherwin-Williams online color simulator because its layout is similar to that of my home office: 

I'm tempted to say it's too purple, but I also hate it when I wuss out and go for the lighter shade that basically ends up looking like white. 

So, my new office might be painted as soon as Tuesday!  And then I can get a rolltop desk!  And also hopefully get more work to do to justify the money and effort that has gone into creating a home office!

Another fun thing we did Friday was go to the park district's annual watermelon-eating contest.  Here are some pictures of Nathan in the contest:

The boy stuck with it, I'll give him that.  But then he didn't win and he was kind of a sore loser:

Not pictured: the following hour where Nathan pouted while sitting on a piece of playground equipment and refused to play at the park or the adjoining splash pad.  I guess when it comes to pouting, my kid can stick with that, too. 

Following that whole watermelon debacle, I took Nathan home to hang out with Bill.  I had some serious shopping to do.  As I mentioned in my last post, my friend Farrah gave me her ticket to go to the Brands & Bloggers Summit.  The site for the conference said that business casual attire was recommended.  Turns out that after 2.5 years out of the cubicle, I no longer have anything in my wardrobe that qualifies as business casual.  Or at least, I don't have anything that qualifies as business casual that can be worn in the summer, to a blogging conference with an after-party, and can accommodate a train commute in an uncharacteristically warm heat wave as well as the sub-zero temperatures of hotel air-conditioning.  

(I should probably note that I do have items in my closet that probably would have worked, but they're all too small and/or worn out.  Wearing poorly-fitting, faded clothing tends to undermine my self-confidence, and in a situation like a blogger conference you need all the confidence you can get.) 

So, I went out shopping.  I don't really have natural fashion sense, which made the selection of an outfit a little bit tricky.  You know how it is.  You find something that's cute, but there's just some little thing about the fabric or the cut that makes it too casual or too dressy or too sexy or something.   And then there's the whole "I really like how that loose-fitting shirt conceals my muffin top, but I don't want anybody thinking I'm pregnant" issue.  

Oh, it's hard.

I finally settled on a pair of black capris, which was a bit frustrating because, like everyone, I already own approximately 50 pairs of black capris.  But again, sometimes you just need that exact right fabric and cut to make something a little bit dressier.  I reasoned that capris in general are not terribly professional-looking, but I figured that a pair of capris on the nicer side would be sufficiently business-like when it comes to a blog conference.  I mean, it's not like I'm a lawyer going to court or something.  

I bought a purple sleeveless top and a black cardigan, the latter being another item I probably own 50 of in variations that just don't quite work for every given occasion.  

Now, the capris were that tight-fitting kind that can show a bit of a panty line if the wrong underwear is worn (and I'm not gonna wear a thong, because that also reveals some unsightly features when worn with thinner fabrics), so I had to go to Kohl's and get some new underwear.  Then I figured I didn't have the right purse to accommodate all the crap I had to haul with me for a 12-hour conference and a train commute.  So I bought a new purse.  Plus I needed new shoes, and jewelry, and at one point I decided I didn't even have the right water bottle to go to this conference (umm, yeah), because a disposable one says the wrong thing about my environmental priorities, but all the reusable ones I had were either too big and/or leaky.   

(Now, I don't want to imply that I think I'm so important that the outside world has nothing better to do than make assumptions about me based on the kind of water bottle I carry.  Like I said, it's all about self-confidence.  And in the case of the water bottle, it's also about not ruining my cell phone and getting everything else in my purse wet.) 

With all the shopping, and the nail maintenance, I think I put more effort into my appearance for this blogging conference than I did for my very own wedding.  (But when it came to my raw appearance and general body type, I had more to work with back in my bridal days.) 

The only other development on Friday was that I decided to stop reading A Discovery of Witches.  I got it from the library, and it's becoming clear that I'm not going to finish it before it's due.  (It's a "Hot Copy," and you only get it for two weeks max.)  I've been plugging away at it for over a week, and I'm barely coming up on page 100, which is like 1/6 of the book.  Now, part of my slowness is that I've just been busy with other activities, but I also think it's maybe that witches and wizards aren't really my thing.  I've never really been into the whole Harry Potter thing, and I know that admission is going to alienate some readers (Leigh Ann), but let me assure you that my real-life friend Katie is the biggest Potter-head (not pothead) I know, and she's still willing to be my friend. 

Failed reading attempts aside, I went to bed giddy about the happenings of the day and the excitement that awaited me in the morning.