Ceramic Turkey Platter!

Ironically, the morning I hurt myself we were scheduled to drive up and help my Favorite Husband's parents move from one apartment to another. That is why I was trying to cram a weekend's worth of laundry into two hours, which is why the well went dry and the pump lost its prime and overheated and blew its pipe just when Mojo shut it off and it all went boom and the green grass grew all around all around and the green grass grew all around.

Since helping elderly people move is not something you can just blithely change your mind and NOT go, I told my Favorite Husband I would be fine and don't worry and he should go by himself. Which some would suspect was a clever ploy to get out of it, except if I were truly clever I would have come up with something that did not involve months of pain and permanent scarring. Plus—and I really should have thought of this from the get-go—it meant that my Favorite Husband and his parents were able to load our truck with all sorts of things his parents had collected through the years to bring home with him, and Mojo (being totally loopy on painkillers by the time he got home) had no real say in what was coming into her house. And subsequent months and months of "have you sold everything on eBay yet?" and Mojo saying "no, I am still injured, it's not going to happen for months" and them asking "have you sold everything on eBay yet?" the very next day. Oh, that and the firm belief that everything they own is now worth gazillions, and since they paid twenty bucks for an plastic avocado-green cake mixer back in the Seventies it should be worth at least a thousand today, and I'd be a fool to accept anything less. But I digress.

Anyway, one of these things that Mojo does not particularly want is a set of dishes my Favorite Mother-in-Law had, and has now given to me. I know absolutely NOTHING about dishes except that the brand "Chinet" is much stronger than the generic thin paper plates I usually use, and hence are usually saved for when company comes over. But my Favorite MiL informed me, with deeply intoned significance, that her plates were "Desert Rose". To my Percoset-addled brain this sounded like just so many random nouns strung together, but now that my prescription has run out it is starting to dawn on me that she was referring to the pattern, which I guess is famous enough that if you say "oh, yes, these plates are 'Desert Rose'" plate people will know what you are talking about. So now let us watch and enjoy the moment while Mojo proclaims in that fake-sort of authority that these are "Desert Rose" dishes and pretends like she knows what she's talking about until someone more knowlegable asks her the simplest of dish-related questions and she just stands there and stammers while it all comes crashing down around her. Because half the fun of the Craptacular involves these train wrecks, huh?

First up in our dish extravaganza is a serving platter. A honkin' big piece of pottery, like something you'd put a turkey on in a Norman Rockwell painting. It measures about 14 inches high and 18 inches long. I'm fairly certain this is NOT Desert Rose, since it is remarkably free of deserts and roses and instead sports a lot of turkey and fruits and vegetables, none of which really indigenous to deserts. As you can see from the back, it looks rather ripply and crackly, which I don't know is good or bad. It is very dusty. The color scheme is slightly Desert Rose-ish, which is probably why she bought it, but it's not. I have no idea when or where it was fired or when or where it was purchased. When I asked, all I could drag out of them was, "Oh, my, that was a long time ago. I don't remember." They were married in the very late Forties and I'm fairly certain she bought this after she was married, so I'm guessing late Fifties, early Sixties. I suppose if I really cared I could research all the marks and get more specific, but to be honest I don't really care that much. And if you care, you already know, so I'd just be preaching to the choir and pretending to know more than I do and that's when all the weirdo expert questions will start and my pathetic attempts to look knowlegable will all be for naught. Mojo is quite capable of looking totally foolish all by herself, thank you very much, without pretending like she knows about things like dishes.

Anyway, it's here, and it's yours for the bidding and taking. Class up your Chinet, or serve a turkey on it, or whatever. Mojo does not really care, although she is good at pretending she cares by nodding and smiling a lot while you rhapsodize on and on about how this is the perfect platter and you've been looking for this for years and you can't believe I'm selling it and yadda yadda yadda. Mojo just wants it out of her house. Thank you for helping her in this worthwhile endeavor. And should you think yourself lucky in the exchange, so much the better. Because Mojo's Craptacular is all about spreading joy into your otherwise dull and humdrum lives. That, and getting rid of stuff. Not necessarily in that order. It all works out in the end, so long as everyone's happy.