Weird stuff to buy

 

Guinea pig armor sold for $24,300 on eBay. Proceeds went to a guinea pig rescue organization. You could get something a little more budget friendly for your dog on Etsy. There were several outfits for cats, too, but my cat ALREADY plots to kill me in my sleep, so I think I’ll pass on those items…

 

 Don’t know what this is, but you can get it on Etsy for under $200. You could probably make your own for a lot less. You could hide it in different places in the house for others to find unexpectedly. Fun. 

 

 Now, THIS one I absolutely love! Vintage necklace made from buttons. This was no longer available on Etsy, but looking at some of the similar kind of things I would guess this would have been at LEAST $100+

 

 

Steampunk Piggy Bank!! I LOVE steampunk! Etsy $110.

 

 

 Octopus door handle. Awesome! Kinda goes along with the Frankenstein light switch in an earlier blog.

 

Free Fall – May 2023

 

 

I was reading some random stuff looking for blog fodder and came across the fact that nutmeg can be hallucinogenic. I thought “Cool! You can drink a heavily “loaded” eggnog at Christmas and pour on the nutmeg!”  That way, you could be drunk AND see unicorns! Doing more research (on Google, not by drinking said eggnog) I then discovered that too much nutmeg (2 teaspoons) was toxic. Not only would you have hallucinations, but also nausea and severe emesis. Emesis is another word for vomit. Might as well put Ipecac in your eggnog. No thanks.

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Describe the first pair of shoes you bought for yourself (meme question)

I was about 15 and my dad, brother and I went to Kansas City, MO to visit my Aunt Bernice during summer vacation. It was a nice visit, aside from the TOTAL HUMIDITY that gave me a headache most of the time. Aunt Bernice was a real bargain hunter and took me on a shopping trip one time. I had a little money that my mom had given me. One store had a bin of shoes on sale. There was a pair of 1969 neon bubblegum pink mary janes that I absolutely fell in love with. They cost 25¢. Can’t argue with that. The picture is the closest I could find. No flower on the side, though. I would have loved that. I wore those things ALL THE TIME. My favorite combination was wearing them with a tangerine plaid dress. I wore those shoes until they fell apart. They were deeply mourned.

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I regularly check out the Bored Panda website for interesting stuff to blog about and learned a new term. Manic Pixie Dream Girl. Originally, an MPDG is a female character in movies that is odd or quirky and exists solely for the development of the lead male character. If you look on Wikipedia you will find a list of movies that have that type of character. Current reps of this character are Wednesday Addams and Enid. The article on Bored Panda asked women the most MPDG thing they had done in their youth to show their quirky side. Most of them were definitely for the young. Here are the ones I liked and would even like to do now at my advanced old age…

Carry bubbles in purse to stop smoking. Instead of taking a cigarette break, she would sit and blow bubbles. I think that would be SO FUN to be in a public place (like Taco Bell) and blow bubbles. Outside, of course.

Bought a bunch of miniature people like the tiny ones for model train sets and would give them out randomly to people with no explanation. I know I will probably never do this, but I’d like to.

 

Ones I liked but am too old to do now…

Wear vintage fedoras or old tweed coats

Thread flowers in my pierced ears

Carry around a plush cat toy (although I reserve the right to do this when I’m in “the home”)

 

Words and Snippets

 

I love coming across words I’m not familiar with when I’m reading a book. I also love a really nice description or phrase. I’ve started collecting them. Here are a few:

 

Wincey – I read this word in the first book of the Anne of Green Gables series by L. M. Montgomery. An awesome series, by the way. It said Anne was wearing an ugly dress of yellowish grey wincey. Looking it up, wincey is also called linsey-woolsey. It’s made with a linen warp and a wool weft.

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Dree my own weird – submit to my destiny/fate. “If I must dree my weird, let me dree it now.”

DREE is the verb, WEIRD is the noun. Came across this in a very funny mystery by Sharyn McCrumb called Zombies of the Gene Pool. It was a sequel to Bimbos of the Death Sun. Both books are hilarious.

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Concatenation – a series of connected things or events. Many years ago I got a t-shirt from a catalog of cat stuff. The picture on the shirt was a line of cats with their arms interlinked, and the word Concatenation below it. I had to look the word up. Loved that shirt. Wish I still had it.

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“The room had greenish distempered walls.” From the book Manhattan by John Dos Passos. Wonderfully written book. The phrase above was describing the hallway of a hospital.

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From the book Mystery House (1935) by Kathleen Norris

Sarah was fifty-seven, grey headed and distinguished in appearance. She was talking later in her room, “her clean elderly fingers knitting busily.”

Her friend Page was 26, but was worried about the passage of time. Her twenties, “with all their vanishing potentialities, were rushing by her like a dream. Thirty, a hideous and hopeless landmark, was looming straight ahead.”

Interesting take on women and age. I didn’t view myself as elderly when I was 57. And I certainly didn’t view 30 as being hideous or hopeless.

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“If you have tears, prepare to shed them now.” No clue where I got this one, but I liked it.

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The rest of these are from various mystery books by Ngaio Marsh

“(The memory brought a) jolt of pain so violent and personal it brought tears to her eyes.”

 

Concerning a nervous man in a courtroom: “Feasting quietly upon his fingernails.” You can almost see him doing this, can’t you?

 

“The rocks came down grimly to the water’s edge.” Really makes me think of a rather barren sea side.

 

“The naked trees, fast, fast asleep, stretched their lovely arms against an iron sky.” I absolutely LOVE this passage! I could feel the winter surrounding me.

 

 

And Pinky Says “Narf!”

  

For my new category about weird/unusual/ugly things I’ve decided to use nonsense words in the title. This one is from the classic cartoon series Pinky and the Brain…

 

 

I saw this picture many years ago on a site that had craft/DIY ideas. Apparently a woman used 1,300 of these wooden and laminate tile samples to redo her bedroom floor. That’s a LOT of tiles to “liberate” from Home Depot and Lowe’s. I don’t think they’d mind you taking 2 or 3 home to see how they’d look, but Thirteen Hundred?!? In this area, there aren’t that many stores, so it would take a lot of trips to smuggle that many tiles out. In a bigger city you could probably hit all the stores around and make fewer trips. It looks great, though. I’d probably just want to do a small table top. 

 

 

 

This is called a Super Schooner. It makes carrying 4 beers back to your table easier than trying to carry 4 regular glasses or 4 mugs by their handles. And it looks cool. Each glass holds 10 ounces. I think it would look neat to use them as slightly separated vases for flowers. Around $20 on Amazon.  

 

 

 

OK. Jellyfish wine decanter. Don’t bother looking this one up. They’re over $800!! And yes, cleaning would be problematic. But a few of these along a window sill filled with different colored liquids would look SO lovely! 

 

 

 

Elven Silverware!! OMG!!! Want this NOW!! It’s 3-D printed and designed by Francis Bitonti and not available for purchase. I don’t know if this was strictly a showcase thing, or it he is making this available at some point in the future. It’s silver plated stainless steel, so polishing wouldn’t be easy, but what a statement you could make setting your table with these! Maybe have a center piece of vines and berries. Some pyracantha, maybe.