Antiques and lobsters.

When a man wants to go shopping, just say yes. I thought we were finished looking around the antique co-ops yesterday, but today my husband said he wanted to look at two more large co-ops that we hadn't been to in a while. So off we went after lunch, to two large resale co-ops in Pasadena.

The first shop is in the process of scaling down from two buildings to one. The inventory in the building they're keeping was over-priced and not offering discounts; the inventory in the other building was 50%-off. Not much to buy in the discounted building-- I'm sure all the good items had either been sold or removed by the dealers. I did find a replica of my Aunt Dolly's cookie jar in the first building--- a little Dutch girl dressed in yellow and brown. That identical cookie jar was on my grandmother's kitchen table before I started to walk, and it was on Aunt Dolly's table when they were packing up her home to move her to Florida last year. The price on that cookie jar was $135-- way too high. Another dealer too in love with her inventory-- the price was so high that the layer of dust on that cookie jar was at least a quarter-inch thick.

In the second (discounted) building of that co-op, I did find a plastic Santa pin from the 1950s. It's not even three inches tall, and Santa's arms and legs move up and down when you pull a thin little thread between Santa's legs. (I'm not making this up.) I distinctly remember those red plastic pins-- we would buy a new one every year because after a month of pulling that little thread, it would break off and Santa's legs and arms wouldn't move anymore. So for the grand sum of one dollar, this little Santa pin is now mine.

We drove to the second co-op, further down into Pasadena. I had forgotten all about this shop, and we hadn't been there in years, but my husband remembered it because he had found some vintage Christmas lights there. This co-op has a large number of dealers, and all the dealers have shelves upon shelves of inventory--- so much so that the aisles in their selling spaces are very narrow. So narrow that if you were wearing a bulky coat, you'd never make it from one end to the other.

Lots of interesting stuff in this Pasadena co-op (Antique Junction, I think it was called). Once again, a lot of dealers too in love with their inventory, because we saw some very high-priced items. While we were browsing, we heard some of the dealers talking, one telling another how an item similar to his just sold on eBay for $156. Well, I would bet that that dealer was marking his item up to the eBay price at that very moment. Do they really think they can get an eBay price in a resale co-op in a tiny town in southeast Texas?

We had fun looking, and I did find three small Santas, each under $3.00, which have now joined my Santa parade in the breakfast room. I know that when it's time to be packing all the holiday decorations away, I'm going to be saying "Just who bought all these Santas anyway?"

Before we came home, we went to the local HEB supermarket. They had fresh lobsters on sale, for just $7.99 per pound. Most of the lobsters were about a pound and a half. We bought and steamed them for dinner. And we'll probably go back and buy four more and have them for dinner on Christmas Eve. The store was offering to steam them for free, but they had the air-conditioning turned up so high that we were freezing in there, so we just took them home and did the steaming in the big red lobster pot.

I kept the cats out on the screen-porch while we were eating the lobsters. No way could we have enjoyed that meal with six little eyes looking up at us.

Very warm today.... up near 80 would be my guess. I'm hoping this warm weather holds till after Christmas. I will have to keep the cats on the screen-porch on Christmas day so I'm praying we don't get a cold snap.

My cousin L mailed me a package this week with gifts for each cat, and for Gracie. The cats love their new little toys, and they have been carrying them all over the house. Mickey Kitty's little bird toy makes a chirping noise when he plays with it, and he keeps hiding it in my husband's shoes.

L also told me that another package is on its way to me. She sent me the French-made Nativity set that my dad brought back from France after the war. When my parents split up, my dad brought the Nativity set to my grandmother's house, then he gave it to my cousin L so she could enjoy it every Christmas with her two daughters. My cousin L doesn't do much holiday decorating anymore, so she thought daddy's Nativity set should come back to me.

I vividly remember that set..... very detailed, handpainted, and there's a window on each side of the manger where we would have either the camel or the cow peeking though. My parents would set it up underneath the Christmas tree every year when I was a kid. My dad thought the manger should have a white light shining into it; my mother thought blue was better because it was softer. Blue it was, and my cousin L also kept a tiny blue light in it.

Our Christmas tree was always set up in our dining room when I was a kid.... in the corner by the doorway, opposite the wall where my piano was. I always thought we had the tallest tree on the block. When I got older, my dad told me that our trees were never any higher than six feet... I guess they just looked so much bigger because I was so small.

I'm not a Nativity-set person, as a rule, but this Nativity will be set up as soon as it gets here, and set up every Christmas for as long as I'm able to decorate. In my mind's eye, I can still see my dad unwrapping every piece of that set (more than 15 pieces in all), then handing the pieces to my mother so she could place them under the tree. It was my job to turn the switch on the little blue light which lit up the inside of the manger. As the little light came on, I would say Taa-daaah! -- I learned that phrase from watching an old movie with my Aunt Dolly. I have no idea what the movie was, but I remember one of the women in the movie saying Taa-daaah! and I just loved saying it.

Merry almost-Christmas. Taa-daaah!