For my husband and I, yesterday was not a picnic and firework-filled day of fun. It was a work day. We have some mutual projects to take care of, so day off = getting shit done time. And since we live in Southern California, almost everything was open in spite of the national holiday, which left us with no excuse to play hooky.
Unfortunately, sometimes we get caught up in minutiae.
Around mid-morning we decided on some props that were absolutely necessary for a photo. Searching for props, by the way, is like a black hole for us. We become fixated with an idea, and suddenly a wild goose chase begins sending us all over town. Yesterday, that prop was an ashtray. Well, actually it was an ashtray and a scalpel. But we quickly determined the scalpel wasn’t going to be easy to find, and settled instead on some tortuous looking apparatus we found at a gargantuan nail salon supply warehouse, which was so filled with gnarly chemicals that I’m pretty sure we upped our cancer risk tremendously during our five minute visit. Anyway, after that we focused on finding an ashtray, because how hard could that be?
Pretty freaking impossible, as it turned out.
Our search took us to vintage stores, thrift stores, the freaking 99 Cent Store, numerous liquor stores, and my personal favorite, a smoke shop. All I can say is…wow. An incredibly interesting group of people congregated, it reeked of weed and cigarette smoke, and the girl working the counter looked like a complete and utter train wreck. I’m talking I’ve been partying three days straight and the only thing keeping me standing is the bucket of coffee I consumed. And meth, kind of train wreck.
My husband stood out like a sore thumb. I, on the other hand, fit right in. Yup, everyone checked out my man like he was the po-po, but they took one look at me and saw a kindred spirit (mistakenly, I might add. For whatever reason, every time I ever attempted to smoke weed, it made me feel like I had jam, or some sticky substance, on my hands. Spending two hours repeatedly washing them is not my idea of fun, thank you very much). I mentioned a few days ago the fact that I still can’t wear contact lenses, but because I am stupid stubborn, I popped in a pair anyway. Of course they only made my eyes redder, and every place we went into yesterday I got stares of disapproval. I kinda wanted to blurt out, ‘hey I’m not stoned, it’s just a nasty case of pink eye’, and then touch the folks that gave me the dirty looks, but I didn’t want to contract any stranger’s germs. The peeps in the smoke shop, however, took one look at my agitated eyeballs and gave nods of approval.
What a weird place for me to fit in…
So we never found an ashtray, or not one useable for our purposes, I should say. The smoke shop had pot leaf and Hello Kitty (geez, what won’t that cat put her face on?) ashtrays, but nothing plain and normal. I’m not a smoker, but I know tons of people smoke, in spite of unbelievably high taxes and, you know, lung cancer. Where do they ash? Surely they don’t all use coke cans and coffee cups? Right? I mean, what are they gonna do when coffee is declared evil, and regular soda is banned for sugar content and diet soda for chemical sweeteners, and cans are banned because…whatever? Huh?
What about you guys? How did you spend Independence Day?
Hahaha, a friend of mine in college and I went into a smoke shop, and the one employee was a early-20′s girl who was tripping balls. Standing behind the register, flapping her arms and making “La-la-la-la-la” sounds. Hilarious.
We were there to buy whippets (laughing gas), and after we got her attention, we practically had to do the entire transaction for her because she was so out of it. She didn’t know what we wanted, we showed her where it was; She gave us too little, we asked for more, she gave us all of it; We had to remind her that she was supposed to receive money from us, she gave us the entire paper contents of the register. Really. (We gave it back and helped her make correct change.)
Absolutely blotto, but strangely enough, in an endearing way. Not some tweaker fucknut with rage in their eyes or anything.
Once while working at a restaurant I went to the cold food storage to get something, and found a busboy and one of the waiters sitting on boxes, each with a can of whipped cream in their hands. Turns out they had gone through the entire case of it, doing whippets. It was funny, but the manager was incredibly pissed when he had to order a new case. After that he put a lock on the storage.
I have a couple of plain plastic ash trays I picked up years ago at a grocery store, in the area with the picnic supplies. Don’t know if that helps. I also frequently see the old cut-glass variety at yard sales and Goodwill-style stores. Could just be an East Coast thing. I’d offer to ship one to you, but those suckers are heavy and I’m willing to bet I’d end up paying $10 to ship a $1 ashtray only for it to get broken in transit.
We tried thrift stores, but no luck, I would assume they get snatched up right away since apparently no store in Cali sells ashtrays:)
We ended up ordering a couple of Amazon.
Hmmm, now that you mention it, I haven’t seen any ashtrays for sale recently. Sounds like an interesting day.
What did I do? I drank, of course! I mean, I WAS celebrating America, right? What’s more gosh darn American than celebrating with some good ole alcoholic beverages on a holiday? Not a damn thing. At least I didn’t have to search for ashtrays!
And how was the Sangria?
It was great. Did you get the pics?
I did, and I want those glasses!
Remember when kids used to make ash trays out of clay in school? Ah, the good ol’ days… (jk). But it’s weird to think about – I wouldn’t know where to get one, either.
Ah, funny! Yeah, what happens if a kid tries to make an ashtray now? Does the parent get fined for 2nd hand smoke?
On the other topic, what I did with my 4th, I went to a baseball game! Very American! Except that the friend who invited me forgot about the DH, so he was majorly bummed that I was leaving him at home with the dog to go drink, eat crappy food, and watch baseball. I *tried* to find him a ticket in our area, but apparently people weren’t selling, despite their being many empty seats around us. It was probably for the best, though, since I have a higher “tourist tolerance” than the DH and he would have *actually* pushed the fools that made me miss my transfer in front of the next train rather than just imagining doing so after spending 10 minutes on a hot platform waiting for the next train.
And then I watched the fireworks on the National Mall on TV. Sure, I could have seen them from the roof deck, but it was hot, and the TV is in my air conditioned living room. I suppose that’s kind of sad, but I’d be willing to bet you’d find a lot of DC folk did the same thing. Tom Bergeron is not as annoying as hot weather.
despite *there*…what is wrong with me?
Yeah, we live close to the Rose Bowl, which puts on a huge display, but we didn’t go outside to check it out either.
that’s funny! You are so right: tons of people still smoke, and yet, what if their ashtrays break?!? Now I’m going to have to keep an eye out for this the next time I’m at Wal of Evil just to see…
Interesting way to spend your American Holiday.
Oo, The isn’t a Wal of Evil close to us, but I bet they would have them!
Incidentally, pool supply stores usually have ashtrays, believe it or not, but usually not the glass type.
Huh, there are three or four pool supply stores within a couple miles of us. I didn’t think of that.
I was a very accomplished ashtray maker in shop class, largely because I was an utterly incompetent maker of anything else in shop class. At least ashtrays don’t involve the use of power tools and the associated risk of lost limbs. I think I got a C in shop class, screwed up my whole honor roll vibe.
That sucks – I would have passed on the power tools too.
Hmmm… the only smokers I know are my inlaws and they, coincidentally, ash in a coffee cup or standing outside flicking in the breeze. I haven’t had an ashtray in my house since 1985 (the year I first became preggers, dontcha know).
Amazon.com, maybe? I mean, you can buy everything else there… yes?
Ebay?
Etsy?
Maybe on Etsy you could get one shaped like a vaj…
xoxo
HAH! I knew it!
And…
ew.
http://www.women24.com/HomeAndAway/NewsAndTrends/Gashtray-vagina-ashtray-20120109
Etsy, home of weird, vag-related crafts.
Oddly, loading the car. My brother, who has not deigned to speak with our family for 7ish years, has invited our parents to visit before he ships out to his next tour of duty (Afghanistan, presumably) so I helped my parents sort through all the crap he left with them when he re-enlisted, and load up for their road trip.
So…honoring our troops! That’s what I was doing!
Honoring our troops is hands down the best way to spend the holiday!
I had just returned from Portland the day before and was wiped out. Plus, it has been over 100 degrees here for the last week. I never left my house due to the heat and my exhaustion. I consider the day well spent.
Ugh, I would stay indoors too. Sounds like you had a fantastic trip!