In Which I Go Shopping

This morning I got up a little early, cleaned house for a bit, and then drove down to one of the local antique malls for a bit of shopping with a friend.

It's a good thing I have to drive a little ways to get to the antique mall, because if I lived next to one I would be one of those people that the police have to dig their way into the house to rescue because so much stuff has accumulated. I swear I am a sucker for those places. If I found a discarded glass Coke bottle on the street I probably wouldn't look at it twice. But if you cleaned it up, stuck a price tag on it, and put it in a cute display window in an antique shop, suddenly I would think of twenty or thirty fantastic things I could do if only I had a glass Coke bottle just like that one. I swear that somehow putting it in an antique store gives it a special shine.

Of course, not everything can be made to look good even if it is displayed on a doily next to a Chippendale. I went in with the intention of finding a lamp or two for the new house, as currently we have a grand total of one table lamp for the entire place, which isn't enough by any stretch of the imagination, and I was blown away by the sheer horrid ugliness that is the antique shop lamp in general. The vast majority of the pottery lamps looked like someone's fourth grade art project. There were also the standard "Naked Lady Holding An Urn" lamps as well as the "Covered In Random Forms of Fruit" lamps. I even found several renditions of the original lamps in our new home's bathroom, fixtures I referred to at the time as "Nipple Lamps." You know, the oblong ones with little nubs sticking out all over them that hang from really long brass colored chains. They wanted fifty bucks apiece for them. I found this really funny. Maybe I should see if they'll buy my lamps.

At any rate I finally found a lamp that I liked, a vintage brass Victorian style bridge table lamp with a purple glass shade for a mere twenty bucks (it was on sale!) and was able to leave happy with my find for the day. I really like it, and Jer expressed his usual relative indifference to anything regarding housewares, so I'm assuming that it's fine with him. I swear the man would be perfectly happy living in a white box, so long as said white box got wireless Internet for World of Warcraft and had an espresso machine.

Connor also seemed to like it, and since he is our in-resident lighting expert (he takes his lighting Very Seriously) then I think it's approved! Now I just have to make a few trips to other thrift and antique stores, as I'm relatively sure that two lamps in a 2300 square foot house isn't going to cut it.

Oh darn it. More shopping. What a tragedy.

~Jess