Monday, February 27, 2012

Luck of the Irish


It isn’t even March and I’m already feeling the luck of the Irish. We had a great weekend in Michigan – pasta pesto at Cottage Inn in Ann Arbor followed by assorted shenanigans with the boys, each of whom provided one of the two most memorable moments of the weekend, not counting of course the sight of Eric and me with strips of blue plastic festooned with  colorful cards strapped around our heads to play a game called Headbandz. I  won’t belabor that one  --  I’m sure your imagination  can provide plenty of visuals.

The first sweet moment came when we used the Apple version of Skype to call Caitie and Joe in Maryland. At the sight of their faces the two year-old flew into orbit, running countless dizzying revolutions of joy around the kitchen table. Finally he crawled up on a chair, hollered, “Hi! Hi, Hi!” with great exuberance and  began telling them it was snowing. But then something white and gleaming on the screen suddenly caught his eye and his voice drifted off into silence. Very gently  -- and this kid doesn’t DO gently -- he reached out and touched Caitie’s face on the screen.

“Teeth,” he whispered. “Pretty teeth.”  And  then  he leaned in and kissed them.

Tyler’s turn came when he  shared with me his  deep dislike of girls. “I don’t like them  one little bit, Gran,  and I’m not going to marry them,” he told me.

“Really?” I said, “But I’m a girl and I think you like me.”

“I DO like you – a lot. But you’re a family girl. I only like FAMILY girls!”

After a  long walk in the snow, an hour of Sesame Street, and at  least ten hugs, kisses, and goodbyes we headed off late Sunday morning to an antiques mall in Findlay where  a bookseller we used to like at the Toledo mall had set up shop when that one closed. I emailed him Friday, so we had directions and his booth number, but before we found him we passed another bookseller who had an enormous display. All I can say is it must be cheaper to rent space there than it is here. We bought four books – two Ohio county histories, one book about oil lamps for our mall, and a gun book so dazzlingly underpriced it felt like stealing. After that I picked up a couple ephemera items, but the bookseller we came to see had a whole different set-up and we didn’t end up  buying  a thing from him. By the time we left I was big-time jealous because that mall allows sellers to erect signs with their business names. Ours emphatically does not.

The side-trip to the mall got us home late, but three packages awaited on the screened porch, the two items I bought from ebay since the rant a couple days ago and the earlier one which hadn’t arrived yet. I was so squirrely I made Eric open them but, surprise surprise! The paperback O’Brian novel for the big set of seafaring paperbacks was fine, the rare Pennsylvania regimental Civil War history was exactly as described, and the Irish books – oh, the Irish books! – are amongst the finest I’ve ever bought on ebay (see main picture above). I whirled and twirled over those ‘til I should have fallen over dizzy. Then Eric remembered he’d bought two books over the counter at the store for me Friday and  retrieved them from the car – Elmer Keith’s autobiography and a dazzling book about contemporary American muzzle loading gunmakers. So MORE whirling and twirling ensued. But after that I checked mall sales  and Saturday’s scraped some of the bloom off the rose. Fortunately, Sunday’s sales tripled Saturday's, so we wound up salvaging our worst month to date, thanks largely to that blizzard a couple weeks ago on the weekend.

Online sales weren’t especially good while we were gone  either – just a few  inexpensive titles that  overstayed their welcome. The only good thing was that the pretty little white mother-of-pearl wedding prayer book from the 40’s sold on my secret site for more than I ever could have  realized on a book site. But that leaves me asking myself if the Book Fair Effect could be starting already. The Book Fair Effect is that strange phenomenon where you indicate a desire to take certain books to the fair and all of a sudden their popularity shoots skyward. Already the little John Quincy Adams book sold and then the Japanese pottery book, followed by that big rose colored book about Ethiopian and Spanish coins in the Danish Museum that I included in the picture of random books that accompanied the blog about random things. And now the bridal prayer book sold. There’s five weeks to go until the fair, which means  I need to stay under the radar for awhile.

On the bright side though I  got an email from a woman wanting to sell antiquarian books. I called her and we set up an appointment to see them early tomorrow morning, but then she called back later to say that a friend of hers has books to sell also, so now we're off to see them all! I’m not holding my breath, but I am hopeful.

And very glad  to be a family girl.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Such a great story and so well written. I loved you little grandson's and their dealings with skype and GIRLS. Pretty teeth! That was so precious. Oh I wish for some time with my little ones before they are grown ups!

Anonymous said...

I don't like this new form! I cannot tell if you got my comment or not. It did not tell me you did. I loved the blog and the comments by your sweet grandsons. What a wonderful time!

tess said...

They have a new form here? I didn't know that. But the good news is you succeeded both times. Yes, the little people do grow up quickly. Dylan came at 10 months and he's going to be three in June -- it feels like he's speeding through babyhood!