Lady is furnishing our new house (140 years old) with used items from Craigslist and Facebook’s market place because she tries to help the planet by buying repurposed rather than new. Got a great hand-painted antique Asian black chest with raised porceline or plastic figures for $35, several wood rocking chairs at $35 each, a carved wood and marble table for $50, a $10 metal owl lamp, etc.

Then she tried to replace her grandfather clock which she gave away when we left the U.S. in 2006 to live in 10 countries on 3 continets for 31 months.

She agreed to buy one. We went to the bank for the money, and started the hour drive to pick it up when we got a call from the husband saying his wife was mistaken, it wasn’t for sale. (Still wonder what was going on there… the wife perhaps trying to sell the husband’s clock behind his back).

Week later she tried another ad, and as we were getting ready to leave, the guy called and said he’d changed his mind.

Found a third one. Got the money, drove over, were let in by a young man who explained it was his grandmother’s clock. Lady glanced around at the art on the walls, and told the dude, “You probably don’t remember me, but we’re related.” Turns out they’re cousins.

The art was by Sandy Pollack, her grandmother’s brother. He’d died a decade ago, and his wife Miriam and their daughter had just died from the Covid-19 plague a few hours apart.

They started chatting about old family reunions, and he gave her two of Sandy’s owl paintings.

I’m thinking Reality jinxed the first two clocks so Lady could buy her grand aunt’s clock to keep in the family.

Reminded me of Croatia in 2005 when we decided to walk into town to rent bikes. As we passed a walled house on the dirt road, two dogs started barking enthusiastically at us, then the big black dog jumped on top of the wall while the little dashed underneath, and they both rushed us. Fortunately they were friendly, just wanted to be with us, and they followed us to town. But they were too enthusiastic, all over the place, in and out of the highway, causing problems, so we had to turn back. When we got home bikeless, we found our hosts had left two bikes for us. The dogs, which we named Thumper and Bambi, came by daily to play with us for the rest of our 3 month stay.

Once again Reality stopped us from doing something because it was already done.

Reality 2, Lady&I 2.