IT'S THE LITTLE THINGS THAT COUNT!!!

It's late afternoon, cloudy with intermittent sprinkles (nothing new!) and David's repairing a "treasure" we found this morning at Marches de Puces, a large flea market held every Saturday.  It's the one we've been to before...again in the rain. Good news is the sprinkles stopped by the time we arrived there on the metro.  Yea,  since we were unprepared for rain and had no umbrella!!!  I've told David my word for Paris is "Prepared"!  It seems you need, at many times, to have either gloves or umbrella with you.  I thought we had learned the lesson the hard way, but I guess not!!!!

Today we were searching, again, for specific items...plates, a little dish for spoon-holding while cooking, some sort of box/crate to hold our DVDs/CDs (yes, we still use them and even bought a universal DVD player so it would play our US DVDs!) and something to plant some ivy in for the coffee table.  There were a couple of other items we would like to have found but, alas, not this trip!  But here's what we did find:

Another trove of treasures!!

Plates, check, dish for spoon-holding, check, crate for DVDs, check and a nice crock for my ivy, check!!!!  As you may be able to see in the pic, the crate is in disrepair hence David is doing some nailing and wood-gluing.  Oh, I we also got a little piece of furniture to put in the guest room that the vendor will deliver Monday.  This is when it's really tough not having a car...there's no way to carry a bigger object on the metro or even the bus.  So far, the vendors have been willing to deliver.

I have a hard time when arriving at the flea market.  If you know me, you know I'm not really a shopper (I know, all evidence to the contrary!!!!), I'm a buyer.  I hate browsing through racks of clothes (like TJMaxx etc) and want to go in, see what I want, and buy it (or not).  I'm the same way here.  It's kind of like the soup aisle at the grocery store---visually my brain gets overloaded!!!!!  So, I have to stand back, browse the stand, then step in for something that's caught my eye.  Too, I tend to concentrate on a particular item at a time.  But, when I see what I like, I know it!  Enough about my crazy!!!!

One of the things I like about this market is they have a food truck to get food if you're hungry but you can also get cafe or chocolat chaud (hot chocolate!  My choice!).   Since it was cooler and damp, hot chocolate was a nice treat.  Near the food truck was this:

I love when musicians come to places like this or the metro station and play.  It just lifts me up to hear the music.  At the metro station people are often rushing and busy,  and I think it just causes you to take a brief moment and appreciate where you are (and I don't necessarily mean in the station!!). Anyway, I always put money in their little basket because I want them to continue to come and play!!

It's not always the big things in life that make me happy, often it's the little things like the perfect plates and a simple man playing beautiful music....