don't i have anything better to do?

Two dozen of the damned things.

The picture to the left is one I took a few Saturdays ago at the local Goodwill and comes from the aisle which features coffee mugs and glassware.  And, for the time being, these godawful Easter bunny mugs.  I've had good luck in this aisle: a bunch of 4 oz. beer samplers (or, as Miz Susan calls them from her childhood in the Lamberton Legion Hall, nickle beers) and a fistful of coffes mugs which I'm proud to have cluttering up our kitchen counter tops or, less frequently, our dish drainer.  If I'm industrious enough to get them into the dishwasher, they can stay there almost indefinitely.  We've put almost all of my finds from this aisle into regular use.  Those finds have even forced us to weed out some of the old and seldom used mugs and glassware (much like me cleaning out my closet and dresser drawers to make room for the new old stuff I'm regularly hauling home) for donation at the back end of the Goodwill complex.

But I'll admit that seeing the 24 bunny mugs all in one place has forced me to ask myself, "What on God's green earth are you doing with your time, you sorry-assed slacker?".  Even if I asked myself that question, the asking wasn't enough to make me turn away and do any serious soul-searching.  Not without taking this picture first, graphic evidence of how I'm squandering what may once have been a promising life.  Or some of its Saturday mornings, anyway.  But, without the picture, who'd have believed it?

Despite the allure of couching out at home and flipping back and forth between the Twins game and the Wild in Chicago for game two of that series, Miz Susan and I went to a family celebration a few Sundays back.  The basic elements of my ensemble, jacket and pants and shirt, all came from the Goodwill.  Miz Susan had sneered at each of those individually as I'd tried to sneak them into the house but she gave their cumulative effect a grudging thumbs-up as we left the house for Marcy's confirmation service.  There are prices to be paid for chic on the cheap and the trauma of seeing the horrifying lineup of bunny mugs could qualify as one of those prices.

I've been back to the Goodwill a few (OK, more than a few) times since I took the bunny mugs picture.  This past Saturday, the stock had dwindled from 24 down to 13.  It's not like they've flown off the pegs but I texted Miz Susan a snap of the depleted supply and suggested that maybe the time had come for us to get in on the bunny buying frenzy.  Her reply was that I should get over it but, yes please, would I get her the little mug with the apple design which I'd also sent her a picture of.

It's not that I've got the thrift shop bug so bad that I'm feeling compelled to buy a couple of the heinous bunny mugs.  It makes for a nice running gag with Miz Susan and about the only way that I can think of to use them would be for throwing at the real live bunnies that have, at times, taken over our backyard.  But that plague of rabbits has abated since our cat Olive discovered that she had both a taste for baby bunny and an innate talent for stalking and catching them and then dragging then, sometimes still kicking and squealing, home.

On the other hand, I still managed to drop $50 at the GW on Saturday.  If pressed, I could probably recreate a list of the haul along with prices so I can't be accused of mindless, wanton, lowbrow consumerism.  Needless to say, though, none of this stuff was essential for survival.  Hey, I'd missed shopping the weekend before while we were in California so please don't sneer at me too much.