Can You Chat?

I have a friend - we'll call her Glenda - who I have known for decades, since high school.

Over the years, our friendship has ebbed and flowed as friendships sometimes do and I'm happy to say that right now we are flowing along nicely.

Glenda (in blue) and me (in pink - I was going to somebody's prom)
in my parent's very Italian living room.
Please note the heavy velvet draperies and the velvet couch that was for company only.
To the left and out of range of the camera was one of those lamps that dripped oil
which was de rigueur in an Italian household. 
Please also take note of our hair. It took hours to get those "wings" perfect.

She lives a few hours away and things like life and pandemics get in the way quite often so we don't get together as we wish we did.  Sometimes even months go by in between our contact with each other. No one feels slighted; we just pick right up which is what happened the other day.

Normalizing The Abnormal

The other day I was somewhere - maybe the grocery store or BJs - and a woman walked past me who was sporting a black face mask that was completely encrusted in rhinestones.

Yesterday I stumbled upon a website that was geared toward the wealthy and just for fun because I wanted to see how the other half lives, I clicked on their 'Shop Now' button which led me to the page where they were selling handmade face masks using antique French fabrics for "just" $75.

Face masks now come in every conceivable color and print and you can get them with graphics that allow you to plaster your favorite sports team or rock band or presidential candidate across your face.

None of this is normal to me and there is a snowball's chance in hell that I'm going to change my mind about that anytime soon.

Doesn't anyone remember when Michael Jackson used to wear one and no one understood why and thought he was weird because of it?

Understand, though, that I am not an anti-masker type. I get that we all have to wear masks now and I don mine wherever I am supposed to which does not include when I am driving by myself in my car, by the way.

That doesn't mean I like wearing masks.
That doesn't mean I want to make a fashion statement with them.
The only good thing about them other than protecting us from the plague is that I can talk to myself and no one will know.

...and the fogged up glasses are always fun, too.

But I don't want face masks to be normal.

Right now they seem to be the newest cottage industry as there's obviously money to be made from them which is an odd thing unto itself.

What if that doesn't end when (yes, when) we finally get the okay to stop wearing them? What if people actually like their masks and don't want to give them up? What if face masks are the new hot accessory, like sunglasses? Especially if they paid $75 for them? I mean, antique French fabric! Rhinestones! What are they going to do with them when the plague is over? Are they really just going to throw them away?  Maybe they're planning to tuck them in the back of their underwear drawer when this ends so that they're ready for whenever the next plague hits? When else would they wear them again?  Do they think it will never end? 

Call me crazy but making a fashion statement out of the thing we are being made to wear because there is an invisible thing out there that is very dangerous and has caused and is causing so much grief and devastation is just super weird.  I might be missing the point - that's always a very real possibility with me.  Are the fashionable masks a way of coping? In a time when there's so many reasons to be fearful, is it a bad thing to take the scary thing and make it less scary?  I'm torn.

Windy Monday

"Windy" by me, 2016

"I don't know, maybe it's that most people are checking their phones 

instead of watching the wind 

but I sometimes think it's okay to just observe 

the wonder of the world we're in." 

-r.i.d.

Interesting Questions From Facebook Marketplace

As part of the massive downsizing we are still in the middle of since the beginning of this heinous year, I have been selling a bunch of stuff using the Marketplace feature on Facebook.

While I mostly detest Facebook, I find it to be quite useful in making me a good deal of extra cash as I use its Marketplace to unload the things we no longer want or need, which is very nice.

Sometimes, though, interacting with the general Facebook public can get a little...interesting.

For example, the other day I listed a set of armchairs that we cannot use in our new home.

These are them, in a picture the realtors took when we were selling our old home:

I listed them as "Beautiful Armchairs" and wrote a nice description which included that they were from a clean, smoke free home.

I got a few tire kickers which are basically people who think the item you are selling is very nice and that they would maybe like to own it just not enough to actually pay for it or have to arrange to pick it up.

And then I got this message:

"Do you have pets?"

Well, yes, I do have pets.  Actually, one pet and she's a yorkshire poodle mix which means she doesn't shed and is considered to be hypoallergenic so it's irrelevant to selling these chairs and so I didn't mention my pet ownership status in the ad.

But before I could answer, they sent another message.  This one said:

"I'm asking if you have pets because I have a dog and this is exactly the type of furniture that he likes to 'mark' all the time."

How does one even respond to such a statement? 

They were asking me, seriously, if I was selling furniture that was desecrated by an animal.

Worse, they admitted that they have a dog that pees on their furniture all the time.

ALL. THE. TIME.

I sat for quite awhile pondering my response.

Many questions arose, most of which I did not want to ask, such as if you have a house filled with furniture that your dog had peed on all the time, what does it matter if you're purchasing more peed on furniture? 
Also, do you ever have company? 

Anyway, I went the high brow route and wrote back that I can assure them that for one, I would never own or allow a pet to pee on my furniture and for two, that in the very unlikely event that a pet that I owned dared to relieve itself on my furnishings, I most certainly would not then offer the disgusting item for sale to the general public as the furniture would be at the curb for the next trash pickup.

They wrote back that they were no longer interested.
I can't figure out if it's because I went high brow or because the chairs weren't peed on. 😄