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

Flashback Friday: Norwegianness Edition

A handy field guide to the wall o' Norwegianishness from my last Chicago apartment: 

Underneath my trio of Grant Wood spirit animals were the lovingly worn lefse stick hand-made by my great-grandfather, a rosemåled wooden bowl and spoon from The Land Of Norwegian Knickknacks I Stole From My Mother or Possibly My Grandmother, two Norwegian ceramic trivets from Vesterheim Norwegian-American Museum in Decorah, a traditional kitchen witch I cross-stitched at Skogfjorden Norwegian language camp when I was in junior high, and some random dime-store-clearance basket I cleverly repurposed to hide the ugly landline phone jack in the middle of my kitchen wall. 

Now everything is randomly stored in some random box in some random location of my storage locker. Which, of course, is cause for a resounding UFF DA.