happy-making

Is it perverse, or just sad, that I sort of want it to rain, just so I would have the chance to use my new umbrella?


Not that I would have wanted to be outside in last night's storm(s) by any means. But it was cool to watch, from the snug dryness of my kitchen.

I've been lusting after one of these for some time — it's made by Marimekko, and my favourite stationery store carries them. (I don't see the connection — they also carry laptop and messenger bags, but nothing else by Marimekko — but I'm not going to question it.) It's in one of my favourite colour combinations, and it's just generally happy-making. And when else does one need happy-making but when it's wet and dreary outside?

...
Edited to add: Incidentally, and apropos of absolutely nothing, it seems we live in a neighbourhood of scavengers, and I LOVE IT. A few weeks back, we replaced our sink — yes, the big 40-inch one we just put in last year. It cracked. (And not in a purely cosmetic, around-the-drain webbing way that some old porcelain sinks do, but in a gigantic, covering half-the-sink hairline fracture kind of way. When it happened, it was so loud that I thought Pd had somehow dropped a dictionary in the bathtub — I know, that makes no sense, but I was half-asleep and that was what my brain thought.) Anyway, we contacted the company, and after some back-and-forth (and some delivery miscommunications), they gave us another one. So the bathroom looks exactly the same, just with a proper sink.

Anyway, we put the (old) sink out on the curb for the garbage pick-up, and ... someone took it, within a few hours. We didn't see them do it, but obviously it didn't just wander off. It's a bit perplexing — I mean, it's a beautiful sink, but with the fracture it's also pretty useless. We think maybe someone took it to use as a planter. Which, okay — more power to them, but that thing is heavy. How did someone manage to cart it away without any warning?

This week, we put out our old washer and dryer — the ones that had come with the house. (We had replaced them with High-Eff ones — yes, these have been sitting in our garden shed for over a year.) And, again, someone took them. And, I know — washers and dryers are expensive machines, so it's not a surprise. But these ones were so old that even Habitat for Humanity and Goodwill didn't want them (which is why we've had them for so long — we kept trying to find a charity who was willing to come by and cart them away). We hadn't Freecycled them because I figured, who would take what Goodwill wouldn't? But I guess that was a mistake.

Someone also took the microwave that came with the house, the one that didn't have a handle any more and looked like it had been manufactured in the 70s out of brown Bakelite. (I don't know if it worked still or not. I was too scared to try.)

So, you see. Scavengers. Which is good, but you have to act fast. Someone put out a child-sized Poang chair the other day, as Pd and I went for a walk, and we couldn't decide whether or not to rescue it. By the time we came back, it was already gone.