Saturday. November 17, 2001

vintage metal stamped dollhouse for sale on ebay

"The wastepaper basket is the writer's best friend.."

Isaac B. Singer

I'd promised my sister and my mother shopping. So, I'm ready for that. I'm still having trouble with some sort of incipient cold or sinus attack. I take a twelve-hour pill along with a little Echinecea and a side of Advil. I'm feeling moderately human when I head out. They insist that we go in Dad's van which is easier for my charges to get in and out of. Off we go to Kerbey Lane Doll Houses. Austinites know that Kerbey Lane is a busy street, especially on a Saturday around noon when slackers with bed heads are pulling into the original Kerbery Lane Cafe for a fix of tacos and strong coffee.

Someone pulls out of a large parking place in front of me and I parallel park the van and get my sister and Mom out and across the street. They have some pull-in parking but not really large enough for the van.

The owner greets us warmly. The floor of the place flooded and they have been cleaning up. It looks good now. But everywhere we go people are talking about the flooding problems all over town. Just too much water and no place to go (fast enough).

Mom and Sis bend the ears of the owner and her helper and my sister buys some things.

"I'm just the driver," I say.

A dollhouse in my day meant a stamped tin affair (rugs, wallpaper, shingles, everything printed on the metal) or else a crude wooden thing made by my granddad. Today it's a hobby with many official clubs, shows and conventions and elaborate houses are built, some eventually costing as much as a real home did when I was a kid. I look around the shop, noticing tiny leather suitcases for $60 and furniture for hundreds. I used to be intrigued by all this in a collectible kind of way. Now it just bores me. It's stuff. I've even grown indifferent to my own toy collections. I'm looking to streamline to maybe a few collectibles, well-placed in my environment. I want to simplify.

My sister and my mother haven't got enough of it, though.

But they are hungry and Mom says she will buy us a lunch. So I pull into the Threadgill's near the orginal Armadillo. My sister gets a chicken-fried steak sandwich as big as her head. Mom and I get three vegie plates with animal fat laden delicious vegies. (Actually I had spinach casserole, San Antonio squash and scalloped potatoes. But I was trying to stop telling you everything I ate.)

My sister remembered a visit to South Congress one time for what FFP and SuRu and I call 'weird shopping.' She has expressed a desire to go to the antique shops and such down there. We park and go through the dance of getting them over the curbs.

"Take your cane," I say, "You, too, Mom."

I suggest we try the toy store first. We look around. My sister buys some small thing and asks a lot of questions about some wooden doll house stuff for little kids. Dreaming her next grandchild will be a girl? Yep, I bet so. Mom buys something for a gift for a miniature club she has joined. I find a jigsaw puzzle with a map and pictures about Texas. Mom says Dad says that the Downtown Manhattan 3-D map would be too sad and we shouldn't put it together. There needs to be a puzzle for the holiday. So I buy this Texas one.

And my sister says apologetically, "My legs are tired. I guess we should go home."

No need to apologize to me. I get them back to the car and off we go for home.

I go home and tell them I will come back when FFP has gone to the night's event. He's going to take a friend of ours to a play so I can visit with them.

The easy chair beckons. I'm tired from the decongestants, I think. Not to mention the shopping.

They call and say that they are having sausage and eggs for supper and I should come over. FFP has gone so I go over there.

They are looking at some old photo albums. Pictures of my sister with all the aunts...when she was the only niece. She was the first of a dozen nieces and nephews for my three aunts who never had children (two never married). They doted on us. It's obvious in these photos that my sister was a focal point for family gatherings when she was the only one.

I play the same game as the other night with Mom and Sarah. They drub me. Maybe it's a complete game of chance after all.

I go home and surf the web, read, doze and go to bed.

JUST TYPING
Write.
Every day.
Lots of garbage.
And little bits of truth.
Little hooks.
That might bring real writing.
Writing that doesn't deserve to come and go without a copyright.

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