Ridiculous Impulse

“Anything you want.” I say to my teenager as we enter the store.
Hey big spenders, watch and learn; this is how it’s done. Goodwill shopping, what’s more fun? (Don’t answer that.) We separate.

[“Begin at the beginning,” the King said, very gravely, “and go on till you come to the end: then stop.
Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland]

I head for the books and . . . eureka! (touchdown dance) I have found two old classics in excellent condition: The Essays – Francis Bacon, and Plato – Epictetus Marcus Aurelius. I know! Fun for all can be had with me.

My daughter finds a couple of tops to redesign. That’s nice. We move on to housewares. You can never have too many giant coffee mugs; I pick out two. This has been a reasonably successful endeavor. Let’s quit while we’re ahead.

[Alice came to a fork in the road. ‘Which road do I take?’ she asked.
‘Where do you want to go?’ responded the Cheshire Cat.
‘I don’t know,’ Alice answered.
‘Then,’ said the Cat, ‘it doesn’t matter.’
Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland]

We head to the cash register where things go terribly wrong. There on display, the ugliest set of furniture in existence. Like a train wreck we can’t look away. It’s the ugly dog of furniture. The dog that’s so ugly, he’s adorable.

[“How do you know I’m mad?” said Alice.
“You must be,” said the Cat, or you wouldn’t have come here.
Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland]

It looks like furniture the Mad Hatter would have in his living room. We are fascinated. My mind imagines turning the two chairs into medieval thrones and the love seat can be for my subjects to sit when they request the car keys. My daughters vision is completely different, but we both agree we can not walk away and let someone else take “our furniture”.We acquire the set (minus the huge sofa which thank God was broken) for the low low price of $29.99 . . . I KNOW!

[But I don’t want to go among mad people,” Alice remarked.
Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland]

We decide that this will be my daughters summer project, since I don’t have that kind of time, and these will go in her room once refurbished. So it takes us three trips to get these items home. We put them in the garage, and head to the fabric store. She chooses a Monet looking fabric design which is on sale. It’s not quite the red velvet throne with gold paint that I envisioned, but it will be very nice. We head to the home improvement store and pick up the: wood stripping chemicals, sand paper, mask, gloves, scrapey thing, etc.

Fabric and Supplies total. . . $78.00
cha ching.

So now I’m coming down from my shopping high. We get home, and . . . enter the voice of reason, (I hate that voice) my older teenager. She can’t pull her car into the garage because our loot is where her car should be. She leaves her car in the driveway, and walks over to us where we stand in contemplation of where our day took the turn that lead us to this.(see paragraph 5)

[“Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat: “we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.”
Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland]

She says “you two are crazy”. I think she’s right. The chairs magic spell has dissipated.They are ugly, we knew that, but looking at them now with the roll of fabric and the supplies has taken the helium out of my balloon. It’s slowly sinking. We are feeling the beginning of a shopping hangover: exhausted, and a little sick.

[‘You used to be much more…”muchier.” You’ve lost your muchness’.
Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland]

That was three weeks ago, and there they sit untouched.

[‘have i gone mad?
I’m afraid so, but let me tell you something, the best people usualy are.
Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland]

To answer the prompts question, I’d do nothing with it.

DAILY PROMPT
Reviving Bricks
You just inherited a dilapidated, crumbling-down grand mansion in the countryside. Assuming money is no issue, what do you do with it?
http://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/reviving-bricks/