Geriatric Love

Last Friday night, I was looking through etsy when I came across vintage jewelry. Vintage jewelry that was listed as "Vintage Estate" jewelry. At which point my little brain put two and two together and I thought, "How is it possible that live so close to Scottsdale and I've never been to an estate sale?" and "Tomorrow is Saturday!!"
So I googled estate sales and was even more pleased to discover that an estate sale featuring Danish furniture was taking place in Sun City just the next morning. Now, Sun City is a remarkable little place. Twenty-five miles northwest of Tempe sits this town of 38,000 entirely created for retired grandmas and grandpas. Literally. The entire town. This is a town where signs like this are on nearly every street:

The lawns are perfectly manicured, and all the trash cans are underground in the yard so you can just throw your garbage bags in without hurting your back. It's lovely, really.
And there are a lot of estate sales.
For those of you not familiar with estate sales, they generally go like this: Someone dies, and their relatives let you go through their house and buy their old stuff. In some situations (like in North Scottsdale or Paradise Valley), this amounts to great art collections and vast amounts of jewelry. It was somewhat different in Sun City.
First, at the first one I went to, it was the third day of the sale, and it was $2 for anything you could fit in a plastic bag. It was all well and good except I didn't want mozart LP's or her old books. So I went into her closet. At which point I realized maybe nurses shouldn't go to estate sales. Because we are much too AWARE of things. Like the arm sling hanging next to her dresses. Did she fall and break her arm? Was it the beginning of her unfortunate demise? Of course, I still got two cute little vintage dresses that I realized yesterday are much too small for me, but I still think of her closet whenever I look at them.
I ended up driving around the neighborhoods and finding three estate sales (apparently, not so hard to find here). And seriously people. DON'T TRY TO SELL THEIR BATHROOM STUFF. Throw away the tweezers and the hemorrhoid cream and the nail clippers. People who don't know each other shouldn't share this stuff. I know what old people nails look like and this is gross. Aren't there rules for this somewhere?!?! It's tacky and it's gross and I really wanted to tell someone, but then I felt bad because maybe they were grieving and obviously not thinking straight. I almost slipped it all into a garbage can for the sake of everyone's sanity. Maybe next time.
Because there will be a next time. Because despite the obvious lack of tact, there were some excellent moments.
I got a great little tablecloth, some cute little vintage handkerchiefs, and at the last one, I hit the jackpot.
This again, is where being a nurse made things too real. I picture too much the cute little old guy that lived there and his shoe size and what he ate for breakfast and I kind of feel I'm trespassing. And then I bought two of his shirts, his suit, a fabulous leather suitcase, two chairs, and two retro couches. All for $33. Now, the chairs are great wood and need to be recovered. The couches and the suitcase are for Brad. And the couch, despite it's amazing yellow velour-ness, really needs to be recovered.

But Brad is really good at that kind of stuff. And I think the cute old guy would be glad his stuff lives on with someone as cool as us. (Even though John was not thrilled at driving back up to Sun City with our friend Phil's truck to go back and get all these treasures. Luckily we got bungee cords from the 99 cents store...)
I gave Lena one of the shirts last night because it's super sweet. I get to borrow it at will.
I went through the suitcase and found two vitamins and a glipizide. It was a low dose, so I guess he was a newly diagnosed diabetic. Really. Maybe nurses who love old people shouldn't do this sort of thing.

(The suitcase says "free & easy" which also happens to be one of Brad's favorite country songs.)