The Pink Lady, Picnic, and Pinata

The Pink Lady is a four-story antique/junk shop near the Canadian border which is all at once intriguing and repulsive. A house filled with vintage discards is a thrill to my group of friends, so much so that we decided to kidnap a soon-to-be bride, Kat Wright, and take her for an afternoon in the Pink Lady. We ended up spending hours there, slowly and carefully pawing through buttons, dresses, slips, boots, spoons, and books. More than a dozen of us elatedly stripped in a staircase to try on hundreds of dresses- polka dots, lace, flannel, wool, silk. All of the clothing is piled waist-high on the fourth floor, and it spills down onto the staircase, which is also overflowing with books, skulls, and kitchen implements. Throughout the rest of the house, there are rooms dedicated to loose themes of junk: a room for baskets, a room for lamp shades, a room for children's toys, a room for salt and pepper shakers, a room for old maps and ship figurines.

We walked away wearing our new purchases: a white fur cap, a tarnished ring, a leather knapsack, and drove a little ways in our heavily decorated bus to a cemetery for a late afternoon picnic. Menacing storm clouds parted for our dining experience, and we spread a giant flag down as our feasting blanket. What a feast! Sesame noodles with daikon radish, golden beet salad with purple cabbage, watermelon with mint, and heirloom tomato caprese salad. Somebody had kindly selected an entire box filled with elegant pastries from Mirabelle's. Macarons of every flavor, hazelnut ganache cakes, chocolate truffle mice, lemon bars, cheesecakes, and eclairs.

On the ride home, we all fell asleep in a massive nest of blankets and pillows.