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Tom and I are hopeless when it comes to discovering new hobbies we enjoy together. After years of attempting to find other fun activities, we still can think of only 3 we enjoy:
1. Estate sales (and yard sales)
2. Car shows (but we've not been to one in years)
3. Watching tv and ordering out for lunch on Saturdays.
Oh, and the occasional theater movie is pleasant and we love Buffalo Bisons' games, but getting us to the stadium--that's the hard and oh-so-rare thing.
Yeah, it hardly gets more pathetic than that. :)
But hey! Some things you must finally accept just are the way they are. If they're pleasing, why seek to change them just because friends and other busybodies hint that you should?
I mean, whose life am I living anyway? Go living someone else's life and we'll end up over in some weird, not-meant-for-us place. We'll reach Heaven, surprised that we didn't live the life God chose for us (and unable to return for a do over). What matters is doing what fits Tom and I as a couple.
You should have seen us on Saturday all dreamy-eyed in Estate Sale Heaven. The first house was a 1920's Tudor quite like this:
Oh, I barely noticed sale items, but rather, the walk-in pantries and closets and built-in white shelves surrounding the fireplace in the sunken, light-carpeted living room. And the other closets and nooks and crannies and light green striped wallpaper in the open stairway and the private little hallway in the master bedroom and did I mention closets?
I had to yank myself out of that one.
One family had owned the second house for nearly 100 years and they'd brought lots of Victorian decor with them when they moved in. The real, like-in-a-museum stuff. They'd not really done anything to the house (it appeared worn and dark), but that's preferable over 'remuddling it'. The kitchen still had it's original floor-to-ceiling cupboards with glass-fronted doors and the floors, windows and doors were all original. There was even a real-live formal front parlor.
This was the 3rd day and the best stuff was gone, but here's what I found up in a sunny bedroom and in the attic:
Lots of ancient rocking chairs had been banished to the attic decades earlier as well as dressers, etc. We saw a type of candle holder you see women in nightgowns holding while climbing stairs in old movies. It could be hung on a wall, even. (Yeah, we should have bought that. It was probably only $1.)
Oh, we drove home that morning all warm and tired, but perfectly contented. We'd again experienced Time Traveling Bliss, our version of Disney World or Hawaii, and found it Good. Indeed, even if our Real Life friends don't 'get it.'
Yet I know some of you do, and that makes our unique hobby all the more special.
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"When they measure themselves by themselves and compare themselves with themselves, they are not wise." 2 Corinthians 10:12
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Anyone else ready for Autumn? Oh, the humidity of July--always it makes me feel 90-years-old. Or what I think 90 feels like.
We often get cool(er) Augusts here in western New York and guess what wilting ol' me is already praying for?
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I so appreciated your taking the time to share such kind words about my 11th blogging anniversary! Thank-you. Much.
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Free Kindle Books:
The Seasons on Henry's Farm
Mother, Walk By Faith Not By Sight
There is no reason to change the hobbies you & Tom enjoy! To each their own, I say, but of course, you already know that! :)
ReplyDeleteThat is a good list of hobbies you enjoy together. Just add tandem parachuting to the list and you are good to go. Ha ha. My husband and I have a similar list.
ReplyDeleteI would have thought you were writing about us here in this post!
ReplyDeleteI heartily agree and these are the kinds of things we like to do too. I'm afraid most of our traveling now is armchair traveling. I am the same way at an estate sale in historic neighborhoods here in Nashville, it's as if I'm in a trance walking through them. My greatest find one day years ago was a $10 cardboard file of recipes and scripts for a television cooking show. The former owner had long ago been hostess of an early t.v. cooking show. It was the basis of a short story I wrote and was accepted by a magazine! Worth more to me than a piece of original Chippendale would have been.
I love the Tudor house with the ivy!
Dewena
You hit the jackpot on that Tudor....especially having been left mostly unscathed with improvements like granite and stainless steel. Boy I bet that felt good. I grew up with antiques and I just love the smell of old wood. It means home to me. But you know, I live in a 30 year old California tract home now, and that's okay, too. I have had a touch of serendipity in the older home department as of late. I recently made a new friend and she mentioned that she and her husband (our ages) had recently seen their dream of owning a Craftsman home come to fruition. Can you imagine? A little previously to that comment she had looked thoughtfully around my own home where we were sitting and said....."Your home is so peaceful." (High praise to my ears!) Then a little later she looked around at my mantle and said "See....I don't know how to do that." Bless her heart. She said she doesn't know how to accessorize. Long story short, I asked if I could help her and I have had a really fun couple of weeks perusing the pictures she emailed me (she lives an hour away) making up sketches of her rooms, and using good old colored pencils to give her ideas on the mantle and built-ins in her Craftsman. I devoted two boards on PINTEREST to her home to give her more specific ideas with furniture and accessories. Tomorrow I'll give her the first of my notes. What a blessing when we can share simple talents. And I don't need to own a Craftsman home. It's just enough to decorate my friends house in my head. Anyway....thanks for listening, Debra. Did that Tudor have a back stairway? I think you're on PINTEREST too, now that I think of it. : )
ReplyDeleteDitto for my hubby and me. We love garage sales, Goodwill, exploring donut and coffee shops but rarely eating out because the budget makes that uncomfortable. But almost every Sunday we have a coupon for buy-one-burger-get-one free and we bring them home and eat with our own potato chips. And about twice a month we have a coupon for an under $9 large pizza (which is 2 meals for us). We've almost made a game of saving money and we don't feel like we're missing out on anything important in life. Yes, i would like to travel to Europe some day. But if it never happens I won't think my life was a waste. ;) Life has been a joy because we've chosen to enjoy what we can afford to enjoy.
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