3 Bullets

Mistah Schleckah was a newspaper reporter for a long time, and a columnist for a few years of that time. He’s always disdained what he calls “three point” or “bullet point” columns – those columns where the columnist can’t come up with a single, cohesive thing to write about, and instead just lightly touches on three things, as if that makes up a cohesive column.

In that spirit, I offer my own Three Bullets. Because there are issues out there, previous blog entries, out in the ether, that need updating. And besides, I ain’t no stinkin’ columnist.

Bullet Point Number 1
"Shabby Chic”, Or The Furnishing of Our House, On The Cheap

Our friends Tommy and Dawn gave us this red spool table this past weekend (reminiscent of the one from my college days), and our friend Mark gave us these yellow chairs a week ago.

I'm loving the red-and-yellow thing; it reminds me of our old friend the two-armed red rocker, on the front porch of our yellow house:

It works, right?

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And we got this table at a yard sale on Sunday.

(It was sunny this morning, Chrissie.)

Unbeknownst to us, the sale had been postponed from Saturday morning to Sunday morning, so Mistah Schleckah dragged my ass out of bed two days in a row. He spotted it right away – it’s oak or something, and *IS* sort of stately. They wanted $50 for it; Bill offered $25. They said no. (I just went in the car and read my book). At 3, when the sale was over, Bill went back. The table was still there. And Bill got it for $5.

The great thing about this table is it’s got an ingenious expandor system, with steel sliders set up like an accordion underneath – it actually expands to 7 feet. And has places to screw in legs at either end, when it’s fully expanded. Of course, the table came with neither leaves (Bill said, “they blew away”) nor legs. Also, someone started sanding it, and never finished. Never finished finishing. But it’s a cool old table, and we’ll work with it, and it’s better than the card table we had (thanks, Mom & Dad), and it cost $5.

We also got two of these swiveling stools, that sort of match the chairs (up there, around the table) that Mom and Dad gave us as a present years and years ago (thanks Mom & Dad) that we had stored in Mumsie’s basement.

The stools were also $5 at 3 p.m. For the pair.

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So yes! We are tying in the living room with the dining room. I know! VERY fab.

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If only they had claw feet . . .

Bullet Point Number B
“Summer Reading”, Or “God Help Anyone ELSE Trying to Check A Book Out of the Library This Summer”

My peeps have been entirely generous and clever and downright brainy with their reading recommendations. To see for yourself, check out the comments here. I swear it’s worth it. Anyway, I took every recommendation to heart, and I checked every one of those recommendations that I could out of the library. Libraries, actually. We’ve got cards to two locally (okay, three, but that’s not important right now) (and, actually, a fourth in Connecticut. And two in Texas) (Is this how crack addicts get their start?)

I am a greedy, greedy library book reader. I cannot let the library hold a book I want to read on its shelves, in case, you know, anyone else wants to read it before I can get to it. I need to have all those books on my shelf, so I can gaze upon them and rearrange them and stare at them and rearrange them again.

And I make fun of Bill for fondling his book collection.

The ones I’ve read since my call for recommendations are:

*Sharp Objects, by Gillian Flynn (a Rita.The.Bookworm recommendation)
*The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, by David Wroblewski
*Lullabies for Little Criminals, by Heather O’Neill (another Rita recommendation)

I’m almost done with Last night I finished The Gathering, by Anne Enright.

And, well, I guess that’s it. But it’s only been 3 weeks. And Edgar Sawtelle *is* 566 pages . . .

Bullet Point Letter 3
“The Westy” Or “What Da Heck is going on with your Van”?

The Westy starting making that same terrible torque-converter-sounding noise the other week. It was my low point extraordinaire. And I’m not sure why, but we let it sit in the driveway for 10 days (including the Fourth of July holiday weekend) talking about when we were going to get it up to Norwich. We finally got it to our mechanic – the mechanic to whom we towed the Westy for 1690 miles – on Monday. Bill drove it up there and waited for it (and had his bicycle, in case they needed to keep it overnight.)

Within an hour they had fixed it – it wasn’t the torque converter at all, but a loose alternator that needed tightening.

Oh yes. The Westy is back. And better than ever. Well, better than she was 10 days ago, at least. And now we’ve got wheels again.

Doesn’t Westy look like she’s smiling?

Addendum Bullet
Or “What an Interesting-Looking Bottle of Tequila You Have”

Since we’re talking bullets, I leave you with this, our bottle of tequila shaped like a bullet, from Nogales, Mexico. It’s called Hijos de Villa (Sons of [Pancho] Villa). The author Chuck Bowden calls it “a found poem.” Beth calls it something entirely different.


¡Viva el México!