Alive

Wedding over. Guests gone. Four months of my life now just a gut-spot on my mental windshield. Is it really October?

Didn't hunt too much but what I did find is amazing. Pictures of best and quirkiest soon (and the DIY stuff I did) as soon as I catch up on my sleep.

Guess that means another month then.

Happy hunting! And happy holidays!

Busy-ness

I gave up on thrifts and yard sales weeks ago.  Not because I was finding little or nothing (though that didn't hurt) but because ... well, you figure it out ...

Yesterday I paid someone to tear three layers of vinyl and linoleum from my kitchen and one bathroom - porcelain tile goes down next week.  I have a plumber coming next week after that, an electrician two weeks later, and a tree guy at the end of August.  I'm headed toward Ikea tomorrow to fill in some spaces and to find something better for storage and display.  Labor Day I plan to paint - all over I will paint.

In between the DIY deluge, I am tidying the landscape, pulling for eBay (and charity - 12 boxes given away so far), tutoring students and teaching classes.

I'm ready to sleep for a few months, but not until after the family comes in for Head Trip's wedding ... and leaves.  Then I plan to ... zzzzzzz...

Finally, The Answers

In brief.  It's all I have time for these days.

Watch #1:  If you have actually been reading for awhile, you should recognize this one - I inherited it a few years ago.  It was my grandmother's.  My mother told me she had it (and that it was platinum and emeralds), that I would have it one day, and that she didn't know where it lay so she could give it to me "now."  I found it after she passed when my sibs and I went through her two storage lockers, buried in the middle of a box, beneath a small TV, along with all the rest of my grandmother's jewelry.  Not platinum but plated, not emeralds but glass.  Don't care.  It was a graduation present (I believe) to my Grandmama from her father.  (Besides, the earrings that were also in the box - that only I wanted - were gold and about two carats of diamonds.  I remember playing with them when I was a child and knocking out two of the tiny stones.  I fixed them as an adult.  What goes around, comes around.)

Watch #2:  If you said this one, you are right!  Found in a thrift shop, filthy and black in many places, with no band but with a label that said "silvertone", it couldn't have been appealing since it had been sitting awhile.  I opened it, looked at the back ("Belais 18K") and said "yes, please!"  The sapphires are likely synthetic, as was the habit of the day, but they actually look pretty real to me.  (By the way - I cleaned overenthusiastically, with Barkeep's Friend, which is the only thing that would even soften the black crud.  NOT good for that lovely, characteristic swirl on the inside back cover.  :(  Sad.)

Watch #3:  Not even gold plated.  Probably sold at Woolworth's in the day.  Still works, though, when none of the others do (except sporadically)!  What does that tell you?

Watch #4:  "14K Over Metal" (inside back) is just another way of saying gold plated, but with thicker plate.  And over 1/2 ct of real diamonds.  All that bling on a fairly cheap box.  Really don't understand people from the first two decades of the 20th century.

Watch #5:  14K gold plated (even says so), synthetic sapphires.  Very common.  Easy to confuse with #2, huh?  Actually, it looks better than #2 did when I found it so likely, if placed side-by-side then, this one would've won hands down.  Might still, if anyone looks inside the real one.

So, how good were you?

Happy hunting!!

Disaster

Just a quick sidebar (before the answers to the quiz) because I had an epiphany over the weekend.  Why?  The storm that moved across the country on Friday slammed into us in the night, literally.  Trees, power lines, branches, and anything that wasn't locked down flew around like paper cups in front of a wave up a beach, killing several people in our area and scaring the crap out of everyone else.  Seriously, I thought our entire house was going to be air surfing into the river, dragging us along with it.  But thanks to both our abilities to set aside panic in a crisis (the Big Lug's much more than mine this time) and my husband's incredibly hard work, we rode it out without loss of life, limb or property.

So what the post?  We had no power, no TV, and no phones (even cell stuff was seriously effed up) - and since our pump is electric (and a sewer injector) my kitchen sink had a bucket in it so I could use it ... then empty it into the garden.  We had 100 degree temps during the day on Saturday and Sunday so meals involved sniffing and even tasting to decide what was going bad fastest so we'd eat it soonest.  Sleeping was fitful and wet ... and very, very dark.  Travel was difficult and futile since nothing nearby was open.  Walking was (maybe) for early in the morning.  Bathing was twice a day.

And I loved it.

I hadn't noticed how much water I waste until I was collecting it.  I hadn't considered how much of my day revolved around TV (even as I bitched I was so busy).  I hadn't realized how many lights I turned on out of habit during a day.  I didn't remember how much I missed ... camping.

Or something like it.  We weren't completely roughing it - we had clean water, and (since we're natural gas) we had a stovetop and no cold showers.  Also, since we bought a generator years ago (but never used it before) we didn't have to bail the sump area for long, nor did we lose the chest freezer full of food (though the fridge, upstairs, was doomed).  I washed every dish by hand, I spent the mornings working (slower) on clearing & cataloging for the sale and reading in the living room lit only by the sun, then late afternoons in the basement (where it's much cooler) being quiet (it's also darker) and going through some storage (when I could see it), then the nights reading on my iPad because I had no other light and it was too bloody hot to sleep (damn that battery lasts forever).  My husband and I spent many wonderful hours just ... talking, holding hands, working together, being together.  It was amazing.  I was almost sad that the power came back on.

Why?  I loved sweating out the toxins and letting my brain go quiet and playing MacGuyver with every meal and having no clients or family or telemarketers calling.  I adored actually feeling the air, listening to the earth, meeting my neighbors (many for the first time) as we walked around (in the mornings) to assess the damage and get our blood pumping.  I revered all of the slower, and silent, and grateful thoughts that I was finally able to think without all the chatter from all the "civilized" bits of our world that we surround ourselves with every single day.

So now I'm writing this by the light of the sun alone.  My a/c is cranked up to 80 and I have a floor fan taking up the slack.  I still have the bucket in my sink (my trees get the water) and I plan to install rain barrels at the first opportunity.  My refrigerator is spotless, and neither of us got food poisoning.  And though I didn't get as much done as I'd liked (because I am too old to push it in the house-turned-oven) I have new determination to clear down to the bone so we won't bump around like pinballs in the dark if this happens again.

Not a single complaint from either of us, for two whole days that most people around here refer to as "hell."  A new appreciation for the simple.  Memories of happy times "making do."  And a renewed faith in myself and in the remarkable man I married.

Good God, I can't think of anything that's more worthy of the name "treasure" than this.

Who's Watching the Watches?

I'm always shocked when I realize how long it's been since I've posted.  This time it's not so much about busy as it is about lazy.  I have been travelling, though, so that's gotta count for something - to Texas to get the last of Mama's estate stuff (mostly Rose Point crystal, shipped to my house, two pieces broken so I'm still pushing the shipper for the insurance payout so I can replace them).  The Big Lug and I have also taken a couple of overnighters, just because (he's so romantic).
Not as much hunting as I'd like, but a nice, heavy bracelet tagged "goldtone" (it wasn't) helped to make up for the lost time everywhere else.  Plus, I'm really kicking into high gear with the Purge.  First things hit eBay this week, but lots of crap has been tossed and donated, and I've made the decision to be a vendor at one of our First Saturday sales, for those nice-but-too-big-a-painintheass-to-pack-and-ship pieces.

For today, however, just a quick post ... with a quiz.

These are five of many watches I've collected over the years.  All have silvery cases (though one also has gold color), and all are 1920's or earlier.  Here's a darker but clearer view.

Most actually work.  Two have real stones.  Three are marked with what looked like gold karat marks when I bought them, but only one is actually solid gold (18K).  Can you tell which are which?  And do you know how to tell?

Answers next time ...

Happy hunting!  And happy Independence (from clutter!) Day!