Gnomes

I’m not sure what’s going on in this picture, but I love it.

I don’t know where a lot of the “things” in my life come from. I was walking with my partner to the grocery store earlier and saw an awesome pen in the driveway – the type of pen I’ve been using to practice faux-lligraphy the last few days (my new obsession). My partner saw me reaching for it and exclaimed “don’t pick that up off the ground!!!” To which I responded “why not? That’s how I get a lot of my pens.” He was horrified.

The truth is a lot of the objects in my life have been accumulated for free from the world around me. This was most prevalent in NYC my first 2 years when I had no money. I found my bedstand (that seconded as a dresser) right outside my apartment. That piece of furniture even moved with me to our 2nd apartment and treated me well. I only got rid of it because we moved into a 400 sq ft studio (with 200 ft of useable, non-hallway space).

Less obviously a lot of my clothes, shoes, socks, pens and random things were acquired in similar ways. For example, we have about 6 umbrellas for 2 people because friends keep leaving them in our apartment. We offer it back to them, but they’ve already bought another one. So we have a crazy swath of umbrellas.

I wore really comfortable flip flops for years that I found in my closet. No idea where they came from. Maybe someone left them in our house? I doubt it unless they’re very forgetful because I wore them often and no one even yelled “Why did you steal my shoes?!”. Very curious. I either have a horrible memory (it’s possible) or there might be gnomes involved in my life. I barely buy anything, but we have more than everything that we need. Keep it coming gnomes!