Second Hand, Second Thoughts

Sarah Cannibal hunting jacket label for Hippik Because I was raised by wolves. Not really. But sorta. Ok--maybe cats. I was raised by cats. I was a difficult, fat, scabby, feral child. The youngest kid of those old-school big Catholic families--the one who crawls around under the piano, eating everyone's homework, teething on old cigarette lighters and rubber grapes. I was an early talker--mostly obscene--because by the time the fifth, sixth or tenth kid comes along, everyone is tired of watching their mouths. Mostly I was in the barn, searching for the new litters of kittens. We had a rotating herd of barn cats. And there were always new kittens. But cats really aren't good as surrogate parents. If you have retractable claws, they might teach you how to kill mice, but other than that, they don't have a lot of useful life skills to pass on to young girls. My mother did not teach me to sew. In fact, she thought I was a bit tetched in the head for wanting to even b...

The joke goes: Two circus laborers were shoveling piles of elephant shit. It was a hot day, the flies were awful and one of the elephants had diarrhea.  A gorgeous woman walked by on the arm of a well-dressed, obviously successful man.  "Ya know, if we got office jobs, we could afford a dame like that," said the first guy, pitching an enormous, soupy elephant turd onto the pile. "What?" said the other guy, aghast. "And give up showbiz?" There are jobs that everyone wants to do because they sound cool and interesting:  writer, actor or theater designer, architect, artist, fashion designer, bar owner. But most people realize that you really should only pursue those careers if you absolutely, positively can not do anything else. Those are jobs that actually require a lot of much of the time very, very dull, tedious work with huge possibilities of ridiculed obscurity, thankless poverty and heartbreaking failure. Most of us who labor in these creative sal...

I am not one of those people who insist that my organizational challenges are because I don't have enough space. Neither am I one of those people that can ignore and live amid clutter. My house is cluttered. But I do not have an organizational problem. I simply have run out of space. Really. What we have here is what might be called an inventory problem. It's a small house. We were proud of that. But I was a full-time writer then. Writers don't really need a lot of place to keep your inventory. Okay, fine--there are all those dusty books, and maybe some paper and envelopes, but the majority of that business just stuff you can keep in your head. Now, up to five people live here and we have an open door for friends and family and neighbors. Now, we have three businesses with heavy inventory: coats and jeans and boots; saddles and bridles and blankets; building equipment, tools and materials. Oh, and there are still the books. So, this week, I'm photographin...

"Let me know if I can help you find anything!" This is a Goodwill store--how would I know what I'm looking for until I find it? But I couldn't resist. "Yes. I'm looking for a round pool table, about one foot high."  leopard skin pool table Andy Griffith Pool Table But all I got was the odd look of someone about to call CFS. That's the trouble with having an omniverous appreciation for novelty songs. But it was May. May is to Florida Goodwill shoppers as December is to Arctic Santarian Elves as October is to saffron crocus harvesters in La Mancha. The snowbirds have flown back North, after shedding the evidence of their obsessive shopping habits, the surviving children have culled through their dead parents' golf clubs, Spode china and Farragamo shoes, doing drive-by dumps on their way to the beach. The gleaners go into the field and make hay while the sun doth shine. I swore each time that I wouldn't buy something unless it was an absol...