Thrift Shop Adventures and Other Stories

I awoke to another American Top 40 holiday special...but this time, I didn't head out right away. Instead, I went in the back room to pack up my donations for the Logan Presbyterian Church Thrift Shop in Audubon. I had a big cloth tote bag filled with knick-knacks I've wanted to clear out for months. I also wanted to get rid of two porcelain dolls my grandmother gave me years ago that I'd never really liked. It took me a while to dig the dolls' boxes out from the containers that held storage for various collectible dolls and bears. I hadn't seen either box since I moved in.

When I did finally find both boxes, I loaded one into my backpack and one on top of the bag in my bike basket and sped off to Audubon. It wasn't easy riding there with a full basket, plus a doll box balanced on top! It even fell off at one point, and when I went to retrieve it, my whole bike fell over! Thank goodness nothing was hurt, and I managed to get it all out of the way before a car pulled out of a driveway.

Thankfully, there were no other mishaps. I was able to get to Audubon around 11, an hour before the thrift shop closes, with everything intact. The place was hopping when I dropped my donations with the women volunteers behind the front table. You could barely move around in the first room with the clothes, it was so busy! The main room with the records, CDs, books, videos, and knick-knacks was almost stripped bare. I did manage to pick up a few good records, though:

John Denver - Back Home Again

Richard Marx - Richard Marx

Bread - On the Waters (This one was a near miss when I was at the thrift shop a month ago.)

Al Hirt - Al Hirt at the Mardi Gras - Live In New Orleans (An unusual addition to my holiday music collection.)

Went straight home after leaving the thrift shop. When I got in, I had just barely enough time to bake Chocolate-Chip-Oatmeal-Cranberry Cookies and watch more Peanuts holiday specials and Nowhere Boy. It's Christmastime Again, Charlie Brown is, unlike it's more renown predecessor, basically a series of interconnected holiday-themed Peanuts shorts. My favorite moments involve Peppermint Patty and Marcie, who missed the first special. Marcie takes Peppermint Patty to a concert of "The Hallelujah Chorus," but standing up for the Chorus itself doesn't work out well. Peppermint Patty is disappointed when Marcie gets to be Mary in their Christmas pageant and she's only a sheep...but this turns out to be just as well, as she somehow forgets her lines anyway. Speaking of lines, I also got a kick out of Sally trying to memorize her one line...and what she actually does say when she's onstage.

Nowhere Boy concerns the early life of the Beatles' John Lennon. Lennon was raised by his strict Aunt Mimi in 50s Liverpool. She's not happy when he discovers rock and roll, to the detriment of his schoolwork...and even less so when he becomes closer to his mother Julia, who gave him up to Mimi when he was a child. As John grows toward adulthood, he finds himself being drawn to both rock and Julia and her less-conventional lifestyle. Mimi tries to reign him in, but when he forms a skiffle (country-rock-style) band with his friends from school (including Paul McCartney and George Harrison), even she discovers that there are some things beyond her control, and her nephew is increasingly becoming one of them...

Pretty interesting if you're a fan of the Beatles. I already knew a lot of this, and even I was drawn into the drama as the two women more-or-less battled for the increasingly confused and rebellious John's soul. I seem to remember another early-Beatles movie, Backbeat, about the Beatles' years in Germany, pretty much picking up from where this one leaves off and being really rather good.

The cookies were only just out of the oven when I went flying out the door to work! Work was busy through rush hour, fairly quiet thereafter. It's still the beginning of the month, and there's still quite a few frustrating people coming in, though some of this was lessened by my being in the express lane all night. I also saw a ton of people buying cakes from the bakery. I guess early December is a popular time for birthdays.

After I got off, I had more shopping to do. I needed more grapefruit and to restock yogurt, cereal (Wheat Chex Mix is on sale) and mouthwash.