One Man's Trash ...

Though the clouds were ominous and the weatherman's words were foreboding, La and I bravely ventured out of the house last night to meet up with Aunt M and friend Kate (soon to be Aunt M's roommate), whom I adore to pieces, who's right up there in the ranks of raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, who shall now be referred to in my blog as "Sunshine Bear" (SB). Because that suits her better. 

Little ray of sunshine. 

To brighten my day.

Anywho ... We met the beloved SB and aunt M for some outdoor Mexican. Yes. Outdoor. We decided to live on the edge. Take some chances. So what if the forecast called for torrential downpours? SB was there. Who would rain on her sweetness? And guess what? It turned out to be a GORGEOUS evening, topped off with margaritas the size of our heads and a cute waiter. 

La took this lovely picture of the two of them:

Now, I don't know if you're aware, but Margaritas the size of your head sometimes cause you to do strange and wonderful things. It was roughly 8:00 pm and we were all chatting and walking back toward Aunt M's place. 

And then I saw it. 

It was nestled next to a dumpster in a gated enclave between two old buildings. It was calling to me. It was a stack of ancient, beat-up windows, probably from 1908 or thereabouts, with lovely chipped paint covering perfectly rotting wood and awesomely-cloudy, dirty glass between the panes. The artist in me cried out. FOUND OBJECT! FOUND OBJECT!

I had to have one of those windows so I could transform it into a work of art and display it on the walls of Aunt M and SB's new vintage-shabby-chic apartment, almost like a stained glass window, maybe hung from rusty chains or nailed into the wall with railroad spikes. Oh the thought of it! Thrilling! 

I SWEAR that the two of them were JUST as excited about the idea.

The problem was the iron gate. With sharp spindles on top. So, Aunt M, being her sensible self, rang some doorbells on neighboring buildings to see if someone could let us in. Nothing happened. So, in the partial light of dusk, with people walking by, I began to scale the gate. I almost got over the top of the gate, but one of the spikes ground its way into my hamstring. Ouch. Then a thought came to me. It came in the form of my father's voice lecturing about how irresponsible it would be to hurt myself while scaling a gate after drinking a giant margarita ... And in front of my daughter ... good thing he didn't see me do a backflip off of a swing at the park the other day. So I climbed down. 

Plan B: I proceeded to jam my arm into the itty-bitty gaps between the bars to see if I could turn the doorknob on the other side of the gate (which was protected by an additional metal box, further hindering my chances of opening the door). My hand fit and part of my arm, but not enough to reach the knob. Then I tried La's arm. Hers fit perfectly, but alas, was not long enough to reach the knob. We were about to walk away defeated, but I gave it one last try, contorted my arm a different way, and somehow REACHED THE LATCH. The door swung open and cheers erupted throughout the crowd (in my head).

We proudly carried our shining treasure back to Aunt M's apartment with grins on our faces (where it will surely sit for the next month while my artistic vision dwindles).