I have a secret.  Well, not exactly a secret, more of a secret talent. I don’t tell many people about it, until today, that is, when I decided to write about it in my blog.  Yet, I’ve just launched my website, and very few people know about it, so I guess it’s kind of a secret between us.

So here it is… I can order things at the dump.

No, not trash, good stuff. We have a give and take table, and I can wish for something, or visualize something and then it appears.  It’s not really even conscious wishing, more like I might think something out loud, and then soon after, there it is on the give and take table, or as my friend Eleanor calls it, “the still good pile.”

When Eleanor told me that she hadn’t read Many Lives Many Masters by Brian Weiss, I told her that I’d get her a copy. Unfortunately for my friends at Toadstool Bookstore, there it was on the give and take table two days later.

“This popcorn is too oily,” I said on a Tuesday. “I wish we had an air popper.”  There it was on Saturday, still in the box.  Same with the French coffee press, still in its box as well.  We’d had one, but I’d given it away and then wished I hadn’t (I know what you’re thinking, but it wasn’t mine, it was a different brand.)  My son’s class was going on a camping trip and the only thing missing from the list was a teapot.  I wasn’t giving up the new white kettle on my stove, and nobody else offered up theirs either.  “Do I dare?” I thought, “Try to order it?”  “Absolutely, not,” I told myself. “But, if I happen to go to the dump on Thursday and there happens to be a teapot, that would be swell.” There it was. I took it home, cleaned it up and sent it on the trip.  Never saw it again, which is why I didn’t loan mine in the first place.

The rug just about put my mother in law through the roof. I had just finished telling her that I wished I could find a new rug for our sitting room – something blue. “Blues are hard to find,” she said. She knew because she’d been looking for a rug for over a year. That same day, my husband and I went to the dump. There was a rug folded up under the give and take table. I grabbed Lee’s shirt. He tried to pull away. “No way,” he said curling his lip. “Not a used rug.” Even Lois, the dump’s recycling vigilantly, took his side.  “You never know with a rug,” she said.  I could see that it was a hooked rug, blues, and as you now know, I’d had luck before.  I begged Lee to help me carry it to the car, promising to return it immediately if it was no good.

My mother in law helped me carry it in, and she unfolded it before I had a chance. “I am officially mad at you,” she said.  “I know this rug, and it sells for 700 bucks. It’s practically brand new!”  As she vacuumed, she grumbled about looking for a rug for over a year. I offered to give her that one, but she said the colors weren’t right.  She did ask, however, if I’d order one for her. “Something with reds and tans, but not too red and not too tan.”  I told her I’d try.

Many unsuccessful months later, it’s beginning to look like my secret talent is reserved for my wishes alone.

Don’t tell my mother in law, but look at the gorgeous oil painting I picked up at the dump yesterday! Just right on the wall where I wished for something with a burst of color.