The Bread Machine Situation

March sixteenth. The yard sales started early this year, or maybe I just noticed them earlier because Simone texted me at eight forty-five on Saturday morning to say she had spotted signs on two consecutive blocks and was this something we were doing. It was apparently something we were doing.

I want to be clear that I went in with good intentions and a mental list of things I was specifically not going to buy. The list was working fine right up until Simone found the bread machine. It was sitting on a folding table between a crockpot with a missing lid and what I can only describe as an ambitious lamp. The bread machine was thirty dollars. Simone looked at it for approximately four seconds, picked it up, turned it over, set it down, and then asked the woman running the table if she'd take twenty. I stood behind her with my hand over my mouth. The woman said yes. Simone carried it home in both arms for six blocks like she had won something, which I suppose she had.

The negotiation, as it happened.

I did not buy the lamp. I want credit for this. I stood in front of it for a solid twenty minutes while Simone completed a separate transaction involving three paperbacks and a ring dish, and I made a responsible decision. The lamp was a very particular shade of orange that I told myself was wrong for the apartment, and I mostly believe that. Mostly.

Carrying it home like a trophy.

We have been to the community center together, to the pottery studio, up a climbing wall, and now apparently across three east-side blocks of folding tables at nine in the morning on a Saturday. I do not know what the through-line is here, but I feel like the bread machine is going to come up in a post eventually, one way or another. I'll let you know how it goes.