For an unofficial Girls Night Out outing last week, Tresia, Grandma Connie, Abby and I went to an auction.   A couple who owned a photography studio had retired and were moving on to bigger and better things; we thought there could be some cool photography related paraphernalia for sale. so we decided to check it out.

The auction ended up being mostly random household/garden items, with a few photog supplies and props thrown in.  I purchased a few things, but nothing all that exciting.

Until…

The auctioneer announced near the end of the sale that they would next be selling the outdoor scenes/props, etc.  Interesting.  The owners had lots of outdoor photo sets, and they were going to sell all of the pieces and parts one lot at a time.  I was fascinated, so of course we had to stick around and see how it went.  (By that time, most of the crowd had vanished.)

Stuff was selling totally cheap, probably because they were huge pieces of structure that you couldn’t easily move.  The first random items I bought in this part of the sale were these two concrete culverts.  I have no idea why I bought them, other than the fact that Tresia made me.  I didn’t take a picture of them, and I don’t know what on earth I will do with them, or even how the heck I will move them since they each weigh a ton, but I own them.  And I paid $1 for the pair. (Oh, Tre, by the way, I’ve decided to give you one of them, since you were so encouraging as I bid on them.  Consider it a symbol of gratitude.)

Then we came to this little shaded structure.  It was totally rustic and cute and had loads of charm.  It was something that I could see in our yard (more than anything else that was being sold, at least).

Isn’t it kind of cute?  I think it’s neat.  The auctioneer had to beg someone to bid $5.00 on it ($5.00!?!?!?!), and I couldn’t pass it up…another girl jumped in and upped it to $7.50, I went for $10.00…and won! (But $10 was my max, for real.)

I was totally excited until Tresia and I walked around to the other side of it and saw that there was a whole other wing to my little structure.  It is stinking huge.  There’s another section to it that we couldn’t see when I was bidding.

See what happens when I think to myself, “Gee, wouldn’t that look cute in my yard?  With a little swing or bench underneath it?”  I have GOT to start thinking things through a little bit more.  I have owned this thing for 5 days now, and still haven’t come up with ONE legitimate spot where it would look good in our yard.

And then there is the issue of moving it.  This is the point in the story when I decided to ban myself from auctions for the indefinite future.  Tresia and I were standing and gaping at my purchase, and the seller joined us.  We asked her if we could come back in the next couple of days with some manpower to help us move it out of there; she said, “Oh, of course!  And you’ll probably need to bring a tractor with you to dig up the logs.  And it’s assembled with 8 inch steel rods, so they’ll need something to get those out with, too.”

Oh. My. Word.  A tractor and 8 inch rods for a $10 impulse buy.  Jon was going to kill me.

He always tells me, “No more furniture” when I go off to auctions.  At least I held true to that, right?  It’s definitely not furniture.

Well, he didn’t kill me when I told him about my purchase later that night.   I believe his exact response was, “Well, we can always use it for firewood.”

True.

And his next words were, “So, can you go to an auction in Sargent for me on Saturday?  But don’t buy any furniture.”

Good grief.  Heaven help us.