I Love A Bargain!

One of the best things about living in Brooklyn is the shopping. Let me tell you about Doggie Shopping. Folks have "stoop sales" every weekend in the warm weather months where they set up card tables or clothing racks and clean out their attics and put all their old, unwanted stuff out in front of their houses & sell it for cheap. The most common items are books and baby clothes & toys. At nightfall, they sometimes put the stuff that didn’t sell in a cardboard box & leave it front of the house for folks to root through & take for free. Some folks don't bother having a sale & just put their old stuff on their stoops or in boxes and leave it for their neighbors to sift through and take. (Sometimes people leave really good stuff in great condition out for the taking; Thelma & Louise found their glass-top wrought-iron dining room table from in front of someone's house around the corner & just carried it home.) Anyway, I've found some of my favorite woobies in cardboard boxes left outside. The trick is to stick your entire head in the box and sniff through it all & move everything around until you find the perfect toy. Last night I found a plush Elmo doll on someone's stoop--there was nothing wrong with it! So I picked it up gently & walked down the street w/his limbs hanging out of either side of my mouth. (I don't know why so many people cracked up as they walked past me; doesn't anyone bring their purchases home straight from the store or does everyone in this neighborhood use UPS?) The only downside to these shopping trips is that Louise likes to take my new finds & toss them in the washing machine right away w/Ivory soap. Even if they're clean enough and smell perfectly fine! Sometimes they have that great kid-slobber smell, but she doesn't care; she washes them anyway. For crying out loud, I'll eat Doritos and chicken bones off the street; I don't care if the woobies are spotlessly clean! Some folks are just neurotic, I guess.