This Week's Hoax Well, it's a blog, but when I started writing these in 1996, I called them "hoaxes."

Craigslisting

Bit by bit, I am furnishing my apartment with other people's stuff and I love it. The couches were from a Latino filmmaker who was leaving Los Angeles for Austin. He made several straight to DVD movies, which he financed with other people's money. Other people rock. I bought the blood-red shag rug from a woman who was selling it for her friend. It sheds, there are clouds of red fluff all over my white tile floors but c'mon, it only cost $135.00. And it's soft and the yarn is thick and luscious. How can you say no? The dining table plus four chairs came from a young couple who were leaving LA- they didn't tell me where. He jammed their shit into my car and she smashed the fifty dollars into her front pocket. I got the "good riddance" vibe from them. Like that table saw some fights.

It's seen a few here, too.

My bedframe came from a guy who supplies furniture to Pottery Barn. PB discontinued my bed, I don't know why, it's amazing. Country, shabby chic. White wood. It's cozy and feminine. So is my apartment. Now I don't have to keep a man in mind when I'm decorating. Red, white, pink. It's light and dangerous in here. You can take your dark, masculine brown woods and shove them up your funholes.

The trunk was my Grandmother's- it looks like it came over on the Titanic, the paint is original and chipping all over the red rug. The desk was hers too, in fact my Dad said she would sit down at her desk at Berkner's in Topeka, where my Grandpa managed the store and write up bills of sale for her customers. I put a TV on it. The bookstand, to hold my New York Times Guide To Essential Knowledge (for which I paid full price, but it was an independent bookstore so I don't feel ripped off), that is also old and chippy. The owner said he'd leave it out on his front porch because he wasn't home during the day. If I liked it, I could slide an amount of money I considered fair under his front door. I gave him $25.00. I try to read one page of essential knowledge every day, in no particular order. Today was math equations. Area, circumferences, diameters. Heron's Formula. Which I already forgot.

The butcher's block kitchen cart was $40.00, a woman had it stashed in her garage and it's a perfect companion for the $10.00 microwave oven that I got at a place home to at least five unrelated occupants, near the Upright Citizens Brigade.

One nightstand came from a woman headed back to Connecticut, another came from a woman who renovates and flips wood pieces on Craigslist like they're houses in the early aughts. She tried to sell me a newly stained hutch too, but I said no, I'm not a hutch kind of gal. One bookshelf came from Korean nationals about to leave the country, and a guy in a truck brought over some tall, utilitarian (ugly) bookshelves for the garage.

Oh yes, I have a garage.

The dresser was $275, but it's a Stanley, with dovetail construction. I bought it from a well-to-do Russian family that had about 80 items for sale, in the hills above Burbank. They have a huge house, and a guest house in the back yard. Every item in the small house was for sale. She was an interior decorator and... then the story got complicated and I stopped listening. Her husband delivered for an extra $25.00 the next day. The mirror was $35 at the Jewish thrift store on Washington Blvd. The crystal butter keeper was $5, the white porcelain lamps were two for $65.

KilBaby is asleep in my discontinued bed, arms around a large Eeyore ($1 at a garage sale) and a plastic T-Rex (.25).