Have you ever left an auction with a little Bonus?

by Caro Hedge

Our signs are up, our signs are up! T. says the train was supposed to be on the other side of the words, but what the heck, what a pain to get it moved. And this way it looks like the train is arriving. The sign lights up well at night. It made us feel like we were actually making progress! We got a door sign, too, thanks to the fantastic Mr. T.

We also got a light-up open sign off eBay for the window, which has the letters superimposed on the shape of an open book. It isn’t quite as large as it might be, and we will be getting a better one, but we needed something to counter the sign in the hair salon next door. Her closed sign is on a strong, very visible orange, and it is in her window, on the side which touches our window. At a casual glance from the street it could be mistaken for a sign saying WE were closed! There’s not room for her to move it so we decided that we just have to counter it with something even more visible. Our plan is to have two signs, one in the window and one much larger on the wall on the north side of our shop windows, about the size of a door. We are also wondering if the empty building to the north would have owner’s who might be willing to have us put up a sign directing folks around the corner to our store.

Susan and I had a conversation the other day about designing and selling a t-shirt with our store name or logo on it somewhere. Also with a picture of a train, perhaps and some books. This is a project in need of a clever idea so we haven’t jumped on it yet. Does anyone else have experience with selling t-shirts? My sense of humor suggests that we only get the large and small sizes no one else ever has, thereby filling a niche, but I suppose that isn’t practical. But getting the whole range of sizes seems expensive when one considers that the idea might not fly.

Meanwhile, we went to an auction (oh, stop laughing) because they advertized an office chair (got it), bookshelves (we won several), folding chairs (with padded orange seats, yay!), and books (there was only one piddling box of books, but we only had to spend a dollar on it). We also got a bonus. That would be a starved and severely undersized cat, which we named Bonus. He spent the auction staggering from person to person, meowing pitifully. He got nudged aside, ignored or stepped on, but he tried again and again to get someone’s attention. Since he was runty, bleeding, dehydrated and not exactly lovely, he was batting zero, although one person did put down a hotdog for him.

We have too many cats, so of course he went home with us.

[Caro tells me that the cat is coming along nicely – as you can see]