Marginally Clever

before & after.

So Friday I went down to take out the garbage while Colleen watched dinner. To get to the side door next to the trash you have to walk through the lobby, past the mailboxes and the potted plants, round the jog in the hall and out past the laundry.  If you live in a the building, you’ve walked a similar path a thousand times.  You’d have to be blind not to notice the smallest change, which is why I was surprised that on the way back something had changed.

On the wall above the mailboxes a sign had appeared:

LOST CAT

Under it was the lamp in the photo with a sticker:

FREE TO A GOOD HOME

Now, in our house we pick one thing a week to work on that’s house-related.  One week got rid of a lot of crap.  Another we labelled all the breakers and changed the sockets to be 3-prong instead of 2.

- Sometimes we fail miserably at the thing of the week.  One time we had a garage sale, got rid of some stuff, put it all back in storage and somehow we didn’t have one extra inch of room in there.  It defies mathematics.  How do you subtract one thing from another and still have the original amount?

- Anyways, where was I?  Oh right, the lamp.  So:

When I saw this I thought it might be the thing this week.

First, we tried it on the entertainment center.  It was… OK.

Then, we tried on the dresser in the bedroom.  It was… OK.

Then today I was leaning back in my chair and suddenly fell upon the wierd hook above my desk. It’s been there since I moved in. Doesn’t hold much weight. Never gets any light for a plant.  But I knew in that moment the lamp and hook were meant to be.

And I wonder at how the world put these two totally random events together for me. I wonder now this teeny random hook and that chance find in the hall have totally changed the mood in the room at night. I wonder why I was able to photograph something so dark so easily. I thought it was worth sharing to remind people to never stop trying new things.

PS: I wonder if the sign worked and the cat was found.