More things I found in my storage unit yesterday

• Clear salt and pepper shakers shaped like cats that I got as a housewarming gift when I bought my first house in 1993
• A teacup from my grandmother’s Blue Willow china
• Chinese-inspired objets d’art are called chinoiserie
• You’re welcome
• An Army rubber ducky that I got from my friend Mike who's a kick-ass Army veteran
• A plaque I bought at the Museu Picasso in Barcelona with a shimmery sky-blue frame that has never gone with anything in any house I’ve ever owned
• Picasso is tacky and his stupid “art” will never catch on
• Loser
• An authentic finger bowl or flower vase or vomit bucket or who knows what the hell it’s for that I rescued when I survived the Titanic sinking
• Or maybe it’s just a reproduction that I bought at a Titanic exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago
• At my age, my memory is shot so its provenance is now lost to the ages
• So shut up
• A French sign about reading on the toilet that I bought at a Euro-charming little shop in Montmartre high above Paris
• A Norwegian kitchen witch that I cross-stitched and framed at Skogfjorden language camp in 1983
• Shut up
• It’s totally not gay
• So shut up
• A stone coaster printed with a vintage Eiffel Tower print
• Though it’s neither real stone nor authentic vintage
• But I like it so shut up

Ah

I have seen the ruins of Rome.
I've been in the igloos of Nome.
I have gone to Moscow. it's very gay--
Well, anyway
On the first of May!

Treasures I uncovered today in my storage unit, part two:

• My collection of tourist-trap figurines from my world travels that I figured I’d never find again among the bajillion unopened boxes I have yet to spelunk BUT I DID
• The glazed ceramic Eiffel Tower ring stand/change dish I have no business owning because I don’t wear rings or carry change but it’s charming and Francophiley and I love it so shut up
• A red Chicago Marathon cowbell that all the spectators jangled along the race route to keep us fired up or at least running in fear from all the crazy people jangling cowbells at us
• National Treasure, the American Da Vinci Code and my gateway drug to swooning over all things Justin Bartha
• MY HELLA COOL A CHORUS LINE BOOK
• Three stray unmatched socks I thought might possibly pair up with the pile of lonely, forlorn unmatched socks I’ve been holding onto for years just in case their prodigal other halves eventually showed up ... AND TWO OF THEM DID!

Treasures I uncovered today in my storage unit:

• Gershwin “Preludes”: A Festival of Sharps, Accidentals and Hand-Breaking Intervals
• Hy-Vee Hy Value Card from the dawn of the Dark Ages when barcodes and loyalty programs were first invented and scannable plastic key fobs were REVOLUTIONARY UTILITARIAN ACCESSORIES
• 2€ coin from my last whirlwind tour of London, Paris and Barcelona—the European economy and the very status of the UK in the EU have been in precipitous flux since I so carelessly brought it home a decade-plus ago and removed it from European circulation
• Hand-made What Would Fred Do keychain given to me as an opening-night gift by a long-ago Ginger in a long-ago Follies where we’d together looked for Astaire-piration as we choreographed our featured white-tie-and-marabou-trim number
• Adventureland pay stub from my living-the-dream summer of 1986 where I sang and danced up to 13 shows a day, 6 days a week for two-digit wages that even then were probably criminal
• Debussy’s “Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum”: A Festival of Flats, Accidentals and Knuckle-Breaking Tempos
• Blockbuster card that’s laminated in plastic so thick it’ll outlast, global warming, thermonuclear annihilation, cockroaches and the trump family’s concurrent prison terms

Things I found in my storage unit over the weekend that I’d feared were lost forever, Brushed Stainless Steel Edition:

1. My banana holder whose graceful arcs complement the organic curves of the fruit it suspends in its noble, counterbalanced mission to prevent unsightly, heartbreaking bruises.

2. My prize souvenir from my one and only trip to Paris: a meta cheese knife with FROMAGE carved out of the blade. I found it in—of all things—a quaint—because EVERYTHING IN PARIS IS QUAINT—little cheese shop near our hostel in the Marais district. It’s a CHEESE KNIFE with the French word for CHEESE carved in it, people!

Well.

I just had my regular six-week psychiatrist appointment and apparently my bipolar crazy seems under control enough that she doesn’t want to see me again for three months.

Or I smell so bad that she doesn’t want to see me again for three months.

Either way, the important takeaway is I’m going to save so much on copays that I can go to Paris!

Goodbye, glittery-ass Christmas decorations!

Welcome back, cheap-ass attempts at artful arrangements of minimalist, architecturally inspired dustables!