My very favourite thrift shop closed a couple weeks ago. Life's bowl of terrible things has been picked from quite freely this year, hasn't it? Thrown into the bag! Thrown into our faces! Littered across the sidewalk! Dumped all over the carpet! Spilled all over the floor till it's seeped under the refrigerator! Need I go on? I've spent so many happy and sad and bored and lonely and restless and searching moments in that thrift shop over the years, ever since I moved to this neighbourhood in 2009.  There's a route I could take, when I walk to buy milk or eggs or toilet paper or something, where I'd get to pass by that shop. And I'd often choose it--that route--so I could look in the windows. The store always had such great window displays, and looking in them would get me excited for my next trip there. Sometimes I'd see something in the window display I might want to buy!  At Christmas time, when I was extra poor but wanted to keep the "let the kid