I managed somehow to avoid my arch nemesis this morning at the Goodwill on Elm Street.  I hadn't been there in about a week, and when I dropped in on Saturday, I think it was, at a totally random time, there he was, picking through a bin in the basement. He gave me the evil eye as I approached.  I didn't need any additional cuts, scuffs or scratches before the holidays, so I let him be. 

Happily, that gave me the chance to browse in housewares, where I don't usually go. I found a lovely little cup, which more than compensated for my troubles:


It was obvious from the pencil scratches at the bottom of the cup that whoever had donated it to Goodwill had been using it as a pencil holder.  But I liked the idea of using it for my morning espresso.  I don't like using a normal-sized mug, because it can be dispiriting to only be drinking a third of a cup.  A cup should be at least half-full, don't you think?

So I am always on the lookout for smaller cups, but ones that aren't so small and twee that they look ridiculously dainty, like something talking forest animals (or taxidermied household pets) would use for their tea parties...


I am not a small person, although being the youngest of three big, strapping, corn-fed, Hoosier farm boys, I still often feel oddly somewhat smaller than I am in fact.  Not terribly smaller.  Just, four to six inches, on average.  That's in height, by the way.  I have no such complex regarding length or girth.  If anything, it's the opposite.  (Am I giving away trade secrets here?)

Anyway, I never liked wee, dainty little espresso cups with the precious little handles that you can't even get a finger through.  You end up just pinching the handle between your index finger and thumb.  And then it takes a great deal of concentration not to lift your pinkie.  But you might as well at that point.  Not that it means anything, or that I would care if it did. 

What ends up happening in most cases is you bypass the handle altogether, and just hold onto the thing by the brim.  That's the manly way to hold a coffee mug, anyway.  Real men don't use cup handles.  We don't need no stinking handles.  We don't need no help holding onto things.  Handles are for wimps.

Various manly mug-holding techniques:


So back at Goodwill today, there wasn't much that hadn't been pretty thoroughly picked through, but I did find one little sentimental treasure in the kids' books section that was perfect for the season:


Did your dentist used to have these Scholastics books in the waiting room?  Mine always did.  I totally fell for it, too.  You know, I used to love going to my dentist because he had this great literature in the waiting room.  I got to catch up on Goofus and Gallant, and the whole crew at Highlights.  And that's probably why I didn't have a single cavity until, like, last year. 

The Happy Day is a classic of Waiting Room Lit.  What I love about it, first and foremost, is that the title is not the least bit ironic.  I was showing it to one of my housemates, a twenty-five year old social worker, who was polite enough to act interested since I was so excited about it. 

I told her not to flip to the end.  I said there was a surprise ending.  And she was like, "Oh, my God, one of the animals gets shot by a hunter."  Did I mention she works in Dorchester?  That's some serious PTSD right there.

I said, "no one gets shot."

She was like, "the ice caps melt and the bear drowns."

I said, "no, no global warming," and told her to just read it.

I mean, it's all of, like, twelve pages, and the narrative is along these lines:

"They sniff.  They run."
"They run.  They sniff."
"They sniff.  They run. They stop."
"They stop. They laugh."
"They laugh.  They dance."

My housemate found all the sniffing a bit undignified.  And illustrations depicting hordes of woodland animals peeping from holes in trees or burrows in the ground creepy.  When they all started scurrying down from the trees and out of their holes, and running off in the same direction she was clearly alarmed.  City girl.

So, after speculating that they were stampeding towards a fresh deer carcass or a campsite to devour a family of picnickers, she finally gets to the end, and [SPOILER ALERT!] ...
I mean, how awesome is that?

I'll tell ya: made my day.