Chip on My Shoulder

Yesterday I stopped by my local Goodwill.  I wasn't dropping stuff off, I had a few minutes and so I perused.

I love the Goodwill because I find things like this.

For many years of my early married life, when I would have my family over...all the woman would grumble and say..."Why don't you have any serving dishes?"  "Why don't you have serving utensils?"  "Why don't you have toilet paper?"  "Do you ever sweep this kitchen?" "Something in your refrigerator stinks."  "Why isn't there any ice?"  "Why do your kids have so many band-aids on?"  "Did you mean for his hair to look like that?"

Then I would feel badly about myself as a homemaker and woman and mother and cry and vow never to have those people to my house again.  

Then one day I decided that I was going to buy serving dishes instead.  It seemed a healthier route to go.

  Well it turns out, that the bowls and platters I like, are really expensive.  Mostly because they come from other countries and are hand painted or they come from Crate and Barrel.

So over time and after many difficult lessons, I have started to peruse second hand stores for these lovely items.  And I often find them.  I feel like I just won the lottery when I find a gem like this one I picked up yesterday.

Now there is a problem.  

I have teenagers.  Teenagers have little regard for things like hand painted Italian pottery. 

If it isn't food, or a text, or a phone call, or new clothes, or a movie, or an ipod...it doesn't even enter their realm of awareness.

And because of this, everything I own is chipped.

This one is hard to see...but there is an even bigger one somewhere else.  It came from Crate and Barrel.

I was soooo excited about this one...from Goodwill...a Crate and Barrel...only $10...big white pasta dish...home two days...chipped.

This one isn't even ours...a friend brought it over with delicious guacamole...broken before I could return it...now I am just hidding it because I feel so bad.

Hand painted Mexican pottery...full price, hand carried across the boarder and carried and coddled on two different airplanes...chipped!

This is handmade pottery that belonged to my mother.  She often traded her work for things she loved at craft fairs. I remember this being on our shelves.  This isn't just chipped...broken!

This pitcher was chipped changing the water in a fish tank...a FISH TANK!

Were these children raised by wolves?  Have they no decency?  

Ill mannered heathens!

There are numerous things not pictured here because they were straight up broken...and gone forever.

Someone remind me that they have some redeeming values...PLEASE!  For their sake.

Cross your fingers that this new piece makes it at least a couple of weeks.

And cross your fingers for my children.  

Because the line between "Oh, it's okay, I know you didn't mean to.  It's just a bowl."

and "I'm gonna get you for that!" is getting very, very, very thin.