Friday, July 10, 2009

Weird Things I LikeTM: Old crappe

Confession time: I'm a pack rat married to a pack rat.

And this is good news! It means there will never be a shortage of Weird Things for me to write about. I've got a few years worth of posts right here at home. This means you can look forward to some delightfully schadenfreude-y Fridays.* You'll look around at your tiny accumulation of old newspapers and catalogs and think "At least I'm not as bad as Poppy."

Here's how bad I am. Yesterday Mr. Buxom got a new violin string from Amazon.com. He'd been missing a string for a while, and as soon as he tuned up, he wanted to play.

Mind you, the last time he played the violin, internet shopping hadn't been invented. There was no Amazon.com. Or if there was, it was for buying books. Which gives you an idea of how long it's been since he's played.

Anyhow, he tuned up the violin and started looking around for his sheet music. And couldn't find it, so he asked me if I knew where it was. Now, we moved into this house 11 years ago and he hasn't used the music in all that time, so no, I didn't know where it was.

The contents of what we laughingly refer to as "the music room":
Four instruments, one amplifier, a bunch of music,
and two
misplaced board games
. What's missing? Talent.


I started digging through the sheet music. When I was finished going through my vocal music, my old piano music, my now-deceased father's piano music, the flute music for my daughter who never learned to play the flute, the recorder music from each child's third grade recorder-playing stage, my collection of sheet music from the 1920s, 30s, and 40s, a few random bits of accordion and organ music of my father's which really shouldn't be here because we don't own or play an accordion or organ, I still hadn't found it.

A small sampling of my massive accumulation collection of vintage sheet
music.
Do I actually play it? No. Do I frame it? No.
Does it hang out in the piano bench? Yes.


He started giving me the hairy eyeball, but I didn't throw his violin music out, I swear. I told him that if I haven't thrown out his Ranger Rick magazines from the early 1970s, or his high school spelunking equipment, or his grandfather's genealogy charts, or the 12 linear feet of National Geographic magazines even though ALL of the NG is available on disks now, I wouldn't have thrown out his violin music.

I mean, there's been an empty violin case in our basement storage area for years, and I haven't thrown THAT out.

And he believed me. Not because of my eloquence, but due to the completely ridiculous amount of crap I generously allow him to own.

I guess this means I need to clean/reorganize the basement, because I really believe there's a box of violin music down there somewhere. So if you don't hear from me for a few days, send paramedics. I'll probably be pinned under a collection of vintage Fisher-Price Little People sets.

---
* Yes, people. The internet has spoken, and the weekly Weird Things post is going to take place on Friday. Apparently people like the whole WTF idea.

8 comments:

  1. My mother had all that vintage sheet music - I used to play from it when I was growing up. I was the only kid in high school that knew all the words to "Don't Fence Me In," "Buttons and Bows," and "Down in the Valley." Not that anyone cared...

    Seeing that photo sure brought back memories!

    You've got to ac-cen-tuate the positive, e-lim-inate the negative, latch on to the affirmative, don't mess with Mr. Inbetween!

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  2. I totally love sheet music. I'm not sure why. I *used* to play piano. Now it just kinda sits in our house (when we live in the states) as a decoration/space-taker-upper.

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  3. Make sure friends and family know where you're going ahead of time and bring some water and trail mix. Never you when you'll get back...

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  4. Just give me a date and I'll be there with my saxophone that hasn't been played in 10 years.

    (Please make sure to give me at least a month to find it first.)

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  5. Once again, you have me in stitches!!

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  6. I wonder what will have been invented by the time you find the sheet music!

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  7. Does this mean I can do my thrifting in your basement now?

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  8. Drop bread crumbs on your way in to the heap.

    ;-)

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Gentle Readers:

For the time being, I have turned off comment moderation. Please don't spam; it's not nice.

xxx, Poppy.