Rambling in the Rain

I should be standing  in a line in Akron for an estate sale as we speak, but woke up to both pouring rain and the thing I try never to mention -- fibromylagia -- back with a vengeance. Eric said he knew when he was the first one up that I'd be a creaky mess, so he even made my coffee before he woke me. To be fair, he didn't exactly use the words "creaky mess", but he knew we weren't going. He could of course have gone alone, but the thought of that is as welcome to him as a coiled snake on the front porch. Why this is I don't know, but there you have it. I actually did consider dragging myself out the door and even looked up the sale online, but the pictures proved so underwhelming I practically fell asleep looking at them. Show me shelves of books with shiny, brightly colored dustjackets and unless I'm looking for something to read I'll happily remain in my pjs. I'm still in them actually and may well remain so, but I'm also determined to work awhile today no matter what. ABE graced me with enough high end orders yesterday after a week of miserable sales to inspire some serious listing.  Besides, we can go tomorrow even though any good books -- if there ever were any, which is highly doubtful -- will be gone. But with any luck I might snag a piece of furniture at a pittance price.

I have to tell you -- this furniture phenomenon has me quite baffled. Every time I buy a piece for the booth, I sell it. I'm beginning to think I might have a flair for it, though it's probably too soon to call it anything  more than a trend. So far though I sold the French table, the barrister bookcase, the Windsor chair and now a side table with a drawer. Yesterday's sale of the latter, while great,  impels me  to get to the mall tomorrow,  however, as I know from experience that everything that had been displayed on it will have been dumped willy-nilly about the place, adding to everything else that gets strewn around in the natural order of things. Be that as it may,  it ain't happening today though.

As you know, I've harbored a vocal fear that  I'll somehow morph into an antiques dealer, but I think maybe I'm over it. What I'm doing is just buying stuff that ENHANCES the books, so if it sells, great, and if it doesn't then the booth still looks nice and I have some eye-catching display space for special items. Thanks to that little side table,  I sold my signed  first edition of  Carl Sandburg's novel Remembrance Rock a couple weeks ago. I'd  had it online about a year, took it to the Akron antiquarian show in 2010, and brought it to the mall in March. At first it was just shelved with the fiction, but when I got the table I showcased it on a little stand on top and -- bingo! -- it found itself a home. So I think I'm on the prowl tomorrow for a chair and some sort of small table or chest for display. I doubt I'm  going to cart either one home though, as none of the weekend's sales look great and they're scattered around over too many miles to make it worth chasing them all down.

Estate sales on the whole have not been wonderful around here all summer and neither have auctions. I went to those two auctions that were okay early on, but since then there's been a paucity of books. A guy called earlier in the week wanting to sell me 24 Hardy Boys books from the 30's, the thought of which makes my teeth hurt. I was also offered a collection of Reader's Digest condensed books enhanced by many oversized Reader's Digest  "special" books, and several large cartons of older Harlequin romances. Mercifully, it was all via phone, so I didn't have to find a tactful way to say no in person. Rejecting books people love makes me feel like the grinch who stole Christmas. I always tell them it's the market, not the enjoyment quality of the books,  and that I, too, have beloved favorites that wouldn't fetch enough to buy a can of Pledge to keep the mall booth clean. This is actually true, as as I have a whole shelf of BOMC biographies of the American ex-patriates in France -- Scott, Zelda, Ernest, Gertrude, Alice, Martha Gelhorn, Gerald and Sara Murphy, et al. which remind me not only of past reading pleasure, but also the early years of  marriage prior to the arrival of the dear little wild things!

Am I rambling? Yes, I think I am. So on that note I am going to snap a preview of the Magical Makeover -- just the desk and the fabulous purple chair. I probably should wait until I can do the grand  reveal, but I think maybe after all this verbage I owe you a little something more.  I know it's not much, but work with me here!

P.S. New Picture with rug