Today they had a free/non-free garage sale. Many of the smaller things were free for the taking. I got a very large wine glass into which I plan to store wine corks. This might take a while as we don't do a lot of wine drinking here, but it looks nice, even empty, on the bar. I picked up a few odds and ends and dropped off even more from our attic which we hoped would be taken for free by neighbors.
The potential audience wasn't large as mostly our neighborhood and a few other places. People arrived donned in masks and either took things for free or looked through the furniture and other things in the more-than-free side of the garage. My daughter was there to help. She had set her alarm for seven-thirty and was waiting for their garage doors to open at eight o'clock. She had been their first customer the night before, running home and asking if she could please, please, please have this orange stool Bryna said she could have.
I was skeptical because first off, did she need it and second, where was she going to put it? She had answers to both of these with the location being in the small area beside the bathroom entrance. We went to go look at the stool and I loved it. It was re-covered by Bryna in a soft, dark orange material. Bryna said there was a chip in the wood (we wouldn't have noticed) and the recovering wasn't perfect (we wouldn't have seen that either) but if my daughter wanted to have it, it was hers. It is now in her bedroom and is a great place for her to sit to put on clothes. My daughter has a good eye for things, it would seem.
The morning's sale was moving along when I showed my daughter an old typewriter they had for sale. She got to feel the ribbon and how the keys worked, popping up from inside the center of the unit. She knew where the letters were from learning typing earlier this year and tried typing something on an envelope. She liked the typewriter and we made comparisons to her braillewriter, which in many ways looked a lot like the antique typewriter.
There was another machine though that my daughter became entranced by—an old check writer. It was owned by Stephen's father and used for many years in his dentistry office. My daughter adjusted the sliders to make a dollar amount and then pulled down the heavy handle to impint "Pay to the order of" and the amount. She could feel the information imprinted, which was different than the typewriter and I think was part of why she liked it so.
She came home and told me she wanted to buy it. It is an antique and is quite valuable and I told her it wasn't something that made sense for her to spend her money on. If she did, I told her, she would have no money left for audiobooks. She didn't care. She wanted it and that was that. She appealed to her father but got the same message: it was an antique and didn't make sense for her.
We thought she had forgotten about it but not unlike the rock in Hawaii, she became obsessed and fixated on buying the check writing machine. In the meantime, I hoped someone—a collector—would come and buy the item. It was beautiful and would be something a collector would enjoy having.
A while later in typical fashion for my daughter, she came in from next door wailing and said in the most pitiful voice, "Bob is gone! I can't bear it!" She had named the machine Bob after Stephen's father, the dentist, who had owned it. She continued, "Bob is the only thing that mattered to me. I will never see Bob again. I will never live a happy life. My life is over. Why do you control me so? Why won't you let me spend my money!"
I took notes on this for the post here and after saying a few things, none of which calmed her down in the slightest, I went to get something from the bedroom. I heard her singing a sad Bob song from the other room. My husband came in about this time and we talked about how they were going to keep it if it didn't sell and that when she went to visit she could use it then. Guess what? That didn't help. She said to us, "I can't bear it; I'm leaving." We asked what she meant and she said, "I don't know but I'm never going to see your face again." Then the anger was gone and she was back to the piteous voice, saying, "if only I could have my best friend with me. Oh, Bob! No! No!!" My husband tried to console her but she lashed out at him saying, "We are arch enemies now. You never help me so I'm never helping you again."
My husband and I had to leave at this point to go check on something at my parent's house so I told her to talk to Blake about visiting the check writing machine when she went to his new house. While we were at my parent's, she called and was even more upset, wailing and saying Blake told her the machine was too delicate and she couldn't use it. I tried to calm her down but to no avail. I told her I had to hang up because I had to call Gramps now that I was at their house. She begged me not to leave her and didn't want me to hang up. I told her I had to, but that I promised I'd call her back. Then, suddenly and without any transition, her voice was completely back to normal. She said, "actually, don't call me back, Blake and I are going to make cookies."
And that's the last we've heard about Bob. Hopefully, Bob found a nice home with a collector. We have delicious cookies here to enjoy.
The Big Boy Update: My son typically prefers to watch YouTube content that's not that educational (at all) but today I came in to find him watching a creator I'm subscribed to. He was watching all sorts of educational videos all morning and kept telling me how much he liked, "this guy's stuff." He learned so much this morning and has already told me things about our planets and how ants that I never knew.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My daughter will tell you her best friend is Blake, our sitter from next door. Blake is so good with her, cooking with her, playing games with her, and basically doing things with her. She loves to have someone spend time with her.
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