Well, it's official. There's a terrible shortage of vintage Christmas ornaments at the thrift stores in my area this season. This is all I've been able to scrounge stopping at four local thrifts more times a week than I'd care to tell you.
I was quite excited because when I stopped at one of the thrifts today, there was a big table pulled into the center of the store just heaped with Christmas stuff. I did not find a single thing I wanted.
Every time I visit this store at Christmas, I remember the scene I witnessed there several years ago. A female employee was stocking the shelves with ornaments. She apparently didn't like the job, because she would ask out loud in a sarcastic tone "So how's the new job?" and then she'd lob one of the ornaments into the bin, like she was throwing a softball. It sounded like this: "So how's the new job?" CRASH. "So how's the new job?" PING. "So how's the new job?" CRASH. I should have intervened, but I was scared.
Only a few weeks after this, someone told me that occasionally people who were working off the community service portion of their court sentence were assigned to thrift stores. I don't know if that's true, but in this woman's case, it certainly made sense. It wasn't hard to imagine her lobbing a few rocks through somebody's front window.
OK, back to Christmas finds. It's hard to see, but I found a nice big pitcher with snowflakes. I don't think the glasses really go with it, but they were all part of the package. The glassware came from a shop operated by kindly church ladies, not recent parolees, so thankfully no drama was involved.