winter clearance

sunrise:  7:04          blog time remaining:  18 days

Today is a total washout.  Nature has performed a thorough winter clearance.  Here is the only remaining patch of snow on our 13 acres, as far as I could discover.  Somewhere out there the sun has now risen, but its light is thickly dulled.

And speaking of clearance...J and I did a lot of recreational shopping over the weekend.  It is a rare activity for the two of us, but we had fun nonetheless.  One nice thing we share is that we are both avid bargain hunters.  Yankee frugality is deeply ingrained.

There have been times when our children sigh or grumble about our reluctance to pay full price for anything.  As with everything in life, I will concede that there are times when it might be convenient, or even more economical in the long run to pay more up front.  But when I can buy clothes off the clearance rack that are brand name and high quality - why would I ever do otherwise?

One of our favorite deals is to buy LL Bean canvas tote bags from the mis-labeled bin.  When the kids were growing up, we had a few giant bags for carrying all the family equipment.  One said "Gregg," one said "Van Baast," neither of which has any meaning for us.  But how handy to say -"I think your mittens were in Van Baast."

When our oldest daughter turned 21, with a world tour with her singing group in her immediate future, we got her a set of luggage from LL Bean.  I was a little bit worried that she might feel badly if we bought clearance bags, but we could get so much more from the sale batch, so we went for it.  She got large and medium rolling bags and a small backpack - beautiful color, an indestructible matched set.   And they all said "ERP"

To our great delight, A. loved her bags.  She especially loves the medium sized one, which she fondly calls "middle erp."  Big erp went around the world with her, but middle erp goes everywhere, and sounds like a Tolkien fantasy. (I have now adopted little erp, which I love)

I should have known it would be okay.  This was the same daughter who at age 7 dragged an old lawn chair down the street from a neighbor's garbage pile (monkey see, monkey do -- her father is an enthusiastic trash picker).  She exclaimed with the delight of a great discovery; "Look!  It's totally fine!"