The Fleas Were A Lil Rough On Ol' Mr. M Over The Weekend. I'm Not Much Of A Morning Person But If The Bird Wants Good Worms (As They Say) He's Got To Get There Early! Still, A Couple Of Pillows And A Big Painting Was All The Worm I Could Muster. Status: Soon To Be Available.

I LOVE flea markets. I mean LOVE THEM! Alas, it is an unreciprocated love at best. Sometimes the relationship feels downright hostile! This weekend for example...

After just managing to eek out a grand total of 3 hours of sleep, I jumped in the car @ 6:15am and tooled over to Belleville for their once monthly big flea and antique market. I got up so early because A: first come first serve...don't wanna miss out, right? and B: it was going to become a bit uncomfortable as the Sun rose this lovely Saturday morning. 93 degrees and the serious humidity that the St. Louis area is known for.

You might not think so, but oddly many of the vendors hadn't even arrived much less finished setting up. This is out of the norm for our neck of the woods. Most outdoor vendors are breaking down around 11:30am so they get started VERY early (and some even shop other vendors during setup!). So as you can see, it behooves the avid picker to arrive early. But this time the plan kinda went all sideways. I trolled the entire flea twice and was done doing do by 9:30 (at which time I had to split) and STILL some vendors hadn't finished setting up!

I did manage to find these excellent barkcloth covered pillows and another cool "Wilson" painting, both from the same vendor. This made the Belleville flea something of a successful day but the next day was supposed to be a day at the Wentzville flea and everything seemed to be lining up perfectly...until Sunday morning.

So Saturday the Girlfriend was out of town and I had invited my friend "Illuminate" to join me at the Belleville flea. She couldn't make it but wanted to join us for the Wentzville flea the next morning. Perfect, no problem. So we planned to meet just off the highway a couple miles from both our homes, and while we were waiting for her to show up...it started drizzling. I looked at the radar and my heart sank. There was a huge storm approaching Wentzville as we waited. We all met up (apparently none of us bothered to check the forecast!) and decided to try anyway, hoping that the storm might beat us there and be gone by the time we arrived. Not so much. It was a slow soaker and NOBODY was trying to setup out there. Crap, oh well. I had even brought a dolly and cleared out Frank cuz I had a feeling I was going to clean up out there! Fail.