The Wrong Kind of Adventure

So Friday I had to drop off my husband across the bay in Fremont. When we pulled up, oddly the car stalled. Hmmm. Well, that’s not good, but I tried not to worry about it. Since I was in Fremont (where I rarely am) I decided to do a little thrifting and went on my merry way leaving my husband to attend to his business. (He had a way home.)

I was super excited to try out new-to-me thrift stores, but Hope Thrift turned out to be a bust. It’s a good-sized store but the quality just wasn’t there. They had one long row mainly filled with mugs which I tend to avoid. The one or two items of interest were damaged–an Italian painted bowl had two cracks.

I was tempted by this vintage set of teaching cards for $4.99 but I was pretty sure they wouldn’t resell for much and it’s not the type of item I want in my store.

Next I hit up St. Vincent de Paul which had a huge book section that was well organized. Loved that. Here’s just part of it.

And after writing about vintage plates last week I decided to look for more and spotted these these cute Lotus bread plates by Castleton China (circa 1950-1966). I was a smitten kitten. BUT. But they were $5 each! Oh dear. I was hoping it was $5 for all four. Even my neighborhood Goodwill wouldn’t have priced them this high.

And what I soon discovered is that anything remotely nice, anything I wanted, was priced too high for me. And it’s not like any of it was that special or exciting!

So I left the store with just one book and decided to head back home and that’s when things got dicey. After making it across the Dumbarton bridge my car decided to act up. It was okay when I was moving but idling at stop lights it tended to stall out. More than once I had to put on my flashers and get it restarted. So I learned at each stop light to put the car in park and rev the engine till the light turned green. I managed to limp the last seven miles to our service station that way. It was a stressful nightmare.

Our service guys will be able to look at it next week, but we’ve had so many issues with this car lately that I fear it’s done for. (It is 15 years old!) After that I walked the mile home feeling 100% jangled and disappointed, but glad I was safe.

Wishing you better hunting and travels,

Karen