Life With Boys

Adventures in Craigslist … private edition … A few weeks ago, I made arrangements to purchase a box of stained glass scraps to play with … you see, a square foot of glass sells for anywhere from $10 to $100 … so I’ve been trolling online trying to find stashes that people were willing to part with …

I make my way to the seller’s home … it’s a bit run down, needs some TLC … and maybe it has neon spray paint dots here and there … before I can investigate further, I am greeted by the seller … long, loose salt and pepper hair … John Lennon glasses … first edition Grateful Dead t-shirt … jersey bell bottoms … and some kind of crochet, fringe poncho vest thing … omg … I am meeting the original burnout hippie from central casting … and she has about three teeth …

We get to talking … she was born in this house … her mom and brother died within a month of each other in this house … this is the house she fled to after she left her narcissistic husband … all this, and I have not even gotten to see my box yet …

Finally, she tunes back in … somewhere in between the dead people and the true era of real rock-and-roll, she asks if I would be interested in seeing the other glass she has … turns out her former mother-in-law was an instructor, and the seller has already moved this lot from house to house five times, and she’s not in the mood to do it again … well, since I am already here, I might as well …

We turn back toward the basement door … which I now notice has been expertly repaired with cardboard and duct tape … just as I reach the threshold, she reassures me that she does not have a true crime torture chamber within … not sure why that comment was necessary …

Before I came over, the seller asked if I would be OK with cats as the glass is currently stored in their basement domain … sure, I’m a cat mom … cats are fine …

Well, cats are usually fine … as I get about three steps in, I witness the destruction of what must have been a natural disaster … if I were to clean it, I would not even know where to start … except there may be some insurance fraud for arson involved … apparently the 15-cats had some WWE smackdown the evening before and the carnage was massive … my host just moved some of the debris with her barefoot to clear a path to the pull chain light … those 25 watts were trying valiantly to warn me that there was still more to behold …

But did I run away, no … I held my breath and soldiered on … 15 cats, one litter pan – can you smell it? With our path now clear, we make it to the motherload of glass stashes behind the furnace … now if I can get there without beheading myself on one of the indoor clotheslines in the dark …

My grand hippie-chick host pulls a light out of somewhere and starts to pull out sheet after sheet of glass … and we’re not talking floor tile squares … these are easily six square feet each … with her baby flashlight, she reveals deep pansy purples … delicate peach swirls … blue-green translucent ponds … and so many brilliant blues … and you know I’m a sucker for the blues … and above my head hear a heated argument and the beginnings of a cat squabble … I am assured that it is just the TV and the cats prepping for the next round of king of the ring … time to get moving … into my car goes $1,500 of rare, vintage glass, for $200 … now I need to find a way to drive the car with my really gross hands … the sanitizer gel is just making a grey paste … Kleenex on the steering wheel, that works …

So now, a full can of Lysol and about 5,000 Clorox wipes later, we have the beginning of an amazing studio space … this empty-nest distraction is starting to take shape … and Matt really wants to know why we can’t just get the pieces we need as we need them … it’s like he never met me …