free furniture

On our way home yesterday, around 5:30 pm, about two blocks from our house, we drove by an enormous pile of furniture out on the curb.  I shouted "stop!!" and the Mister slammed on the brakes, put it in reverse and backed up.  I hopped out and looked at the furniture.   A couple of sofas, a seriously ugly entertainment center, odds and ends, and at the very end, a pair of two small dressers, just about the right size for the boys room.

A lady walks out of the garage. "Can I help you?"  Yep, I'd like to look at the furniture. She starts detailing the usefulness of the hideous entertainment center.  No, I'm interested in the dressers.  "You can have them for $10! And here, I have this other stuff, come see!"  She takes me by the arm and leads me into her garage.  I look at the Mister through the car window and mouth silently "3 minutes."   As in, come and get me if the crazy lady hasn't let me out of her house in 3 minutes.

She chatters on about how she has to be out that evening by nine pm, the movers just left all this stuff on the curb, there's still all this stuff in the house she has to get rid of.  Inside, the house is clearly a rental that has not been improved since the fifties.  And its full of trash bags.  Room upon room of trash bags.  I do not see a single piece of furniture, nor do I want to dig through this woman's trash.  "Here's a really nice frame, you can have it for $3!"  Um....thanks, let me talk to my husband about the dressers.

I escape to the outside, and my husband is inspecting the dressers.  They are in decent shape, they look nice, they are the right size, and they would look great with a coat of paint. An old guy next door is peering out his front door, phone in hand, ready to call 911 if we get rowdy.  I walk back to the garage and tell her I'd like dressers.

"Great! You can have them for $50 each!"

Uh....you said $10 for the pair a few minutes ago.

"Fine, $20 each! I HAVE TO MAKE SOME MONEY, YOU KNOW!!!!!" she screams at me.

Uh...lady, all this furniture is ON THE CURB.  Resting on two feet of snow.  Most people would think that means "free".

"Well, I'm selling them on craigslist, you know!"

We drove by today and they are still there, but now they've been sitting deep in the snow for over 24 hours, plus it rained today.  And the crazy lady was in her driveway, so we kept on going.