Each of my children sounded a little sad after I mentioned to them that our old steam cleaner which, despite its weight and complexity they all knew how to assemble and use, had finally died.
Tom wanted to look for some place in town that might be able to repair it. I knew how he was feeling, still I proposed we let it rest in peace and just buy a new one.
In truth I know that last Friday it wasn't the loss of an old steam cleaner that had us all feeling kind of down. In truth we, like many of our fellow Americans, were just coming off a hard week and might not have felt any better even if our carpet cleaner hadn't plotzed.
But life was going on and Tom and I were now faced with the first-world micro-dilemma of either buying a new carpet cleaner or not buying a new carpet cleaner.
We decided to buy a new one. We decided we wanted a new one exactly like the old one, in other words, one that weighed a ton, was complicated to figure out, and was a chore to use.
Shows how clearly we two 65-year-olds were thinking last week.
Anyway, on Saturday morning it was cold, overcast and sprinkling snow when we headed out to the Sears where we bought our first cleaner,
And I knew at that moment that, more than a new steam cleaner, what we really needed on that grey, gloomy November Saturday morning was a little thrifting to cheer us up.
I don't know what it is about thrift stores that makes them so appealing to us aficionados.