How to Cure Yourself of eBay During a Pandemic

On April 5, 2021 by karengb With 4 Comments - personal history

I’ve bought 44 things on eBay since the COVID-19 quarantine started.

Am I the only one? I can’t be the only one. But I cured myself, and I’m going to tell you how I did that. But first, let me tell you how things got out of control.

It started with clothes. I began working from home last year with a strong commitment to sitting down at my computer at 7:30 AM each morning, showered, dressed, and wearing makeup, shoes, and accessories.

Yeah, right.

That lasted a month.

Jeans were tossed aside early on. The one outfit I could consistently coax myself into was leggings and a knit Old Navy swing dress. I had a couple, but thanks to eBay, I soon had…many. Probably too many. I could go in there (there being my closet) and count, but that might be really disheartening. There are more than a few, thank you. Isn’t that enough?

Fine, I’ll go make a count.

Fourteen.

Okay? Are you happy, now? There are fourteen Old Navy knit swing dresses in my closet (well, one of them is currently on my body), and when this all started, there were two. I gave another two away because the stripes weren’t flattering, but I refuse to count those. So, fourteen.

And you know, with my Mary Jane-type Dansko clogs (of which I have four pair because I like to overbuy whatever works for my feet), I really have a look going on. I put on a scarf and earrings and I look so kicky and middle-aged and also sort of like a chubby toddler who has gotten into Grandma’s accessories.

Will I change my style when I go back to the office full time? Jesus, I sure hope so. But I so rarely wear anything else. When I do mix it up with, say, jeans and a not-long top? A stranger looks back at me from the mirror.

It isn’t just clothing.

I collect things. Many things, but I go wide in collecting, not deep. There’s some axiom that “Three things is a collection,” and if that’s the case, then I have quite a few collections sitting together in my home.

I have four glass paperweights on a windowsill. One was inherited, one was a gift, one was a souvenir, and one was thrifted. That’s all I have and all I probably ever will have, as far as glass paperweights go. But I like them, so I keep them.

It gets weird on my hutch, but not because I’ve gone deep into one thing or another. Still, going wide adds up. Three pieces of Marcrest pottery. Some eight or so various pieces of froth/drip pottery from Hull and Pfaltzgraff. Some Denby plates. Three Howard Pierce ceramic animals. A little of this, a little of that.

But I have FIFTEEN vintage honeypots on that hutch. I don’t want to count how many small, poorly painted, ridiculously cute made-in-occupied-Japan ceramic dogs are scattered around the house. So I can go too far.

I have lost control in quarantine.

I blame eBay for allowing me to go off on strange purchasing jags, including a particular style of Fitz & Floyd figurines from the 1980s (they are really neat in a Lisa Larsson knockoff way). I have picked them off with steely precision when they came up for bid. They are cute, but they are also cutesy.

What did my husband think, watching me liberate all these gewgaws from their protective bubble wrappings? Did he think I was nuts? Or was he just happy that I was happy?

I was happy until I bought two that didn’t quite fit with the general aesthetic. They were too blue, and they ruined everything, so I donated them and called myself done. And so far I’ve stuck to that, but I’ve bought other things. Just a couple. I’m trying to keep myself in check.

But finally, I went too far.

I like handmade coffee mugs. I have…a few now, as opposed to when I wrote a Medium piece about my mug problem. I buy the mugs at thrift stores, though my “one true mug” was purchased at the pottery place on Orcas Island.

I also like mice and rats. To be clear, I don’t like mice and rats themselves, so much as I like representations of them. I love me some Hunca Munca, and Brambly Hedge books, and that kind of nonsense. I was born in the Year of the Rat, so, I have a lot of rat netsuke (Oh, I forgot to talk about my netsuke collection, didn’t I. That one is kind of deep).

So when a certain item showed up on eBay, I thought, “Wow, that looks interesting! This item combines my love of artistic representations of rats with my love of handmade pottery coffee cups! I should bid on that! This will be cute!”

Guess what. It isn’t cute. Not at all.

It. Is. Monstrous.

It’s three times the size I thought it would be, and horribly realistic. It’s huge, and detailed, with inset glass eyes and a gross, bumpy tail for a handle. The head of the thing is easily six times the size of a real rat’s head (and I know this because of course we have had pet rats over the years). Real rats have disturbing pink tails, but aside from that they are very smart, and sweet.

This thing is a nightmare.

I sent photos of it to my sister. Once she stopped bawling with horrified laughter, she said (diplomatically), “I guess I’m having some trouble seeing why you thought this might be cute, no matter how big it was.” I told her I had somehow conflated it with the first netsuke I ever bought in 1978, a round rat which fits nicely in the palm of my hand and brings me joy.

A rat netsuke (reproduction) held in the blogger's hand.

I thought this gigantic rat mug would bring me similar joy. It doesn’t. It brings me horror, and a degree of shame and self-loathing. How could I have bought such a thing? Any sane person would banish it from her home immediately.

I kept it.

I have it prominently displayed on my hutch. It’s over there right now, leering at me over its left shoulder (imagine, a coffee mug with shoulders) with its glass-eyed, whiskered smile. It is doing some important work, there on my hutch. Every time I go to eBay, and I get the urge to bid on something, I make myself look at this monstrosity, instead.

And that’s how you cure yourself of eBay, during a pandemic.

(P.S.)

In case you were wondering about my netsuke rats, here they are. Yes, I know some of these are reproductions. Additionally, I know that some of these things are not netsuke.

14 small carvings of rats and mice on a wooden table.

This is but a fraction of the netsuke, but every netsuke and netsuke-adjacent item I own fits in this card box, with my glasses for scale. I can live with it.