hellobeautifulcreatures

As a couple left Mission ’s A Fabulous Find, a clerk called out, “Have you-all been to our new store?” Sharon Choikhit opened A Fabulous Find in mid-2012, in a 11,500-square-foot space at 5330 Martway St. in the Mission Mart Shopping Center . It features about 175 vendors selling antiques , home decor, memorabilia, books and more. In March, she took over a 9,700-square-foot space a few doors down at 5304 Martway for One of a Kind Home Furnishings & Fashion, selling consignment furniture (new lines, vintage and antique), as well as home decor and accessories, and new women’s clothing, jewelry, accessories and gifts. The store recently had a wood fringe chandelier for $740 and a mantel clock for $545 (if you break it, you buy it, a tag warns), along with red flowered Sur La Table dinner plates handcrafted in Italy, a wine cabinet (or bathroom storage cabinet , a tag suggests), a roll top desk, pewter server, a suitcase chair, alphabet bamboo rug and much more. People with furnit...

The gentleman on the other end of the line was sobbing. A moment ago, he had been yelling at me, but when that didn’t work, he turned to an emotional plea. He told me about his wife and children that he needed to support, his mortgage, his car payment, his utilities. He probably would have tried bargaining, but we both knew that would go nowhere. This conversation was about one thing: ending his unemployment benefits. I wish I could say I was moved. But I was two hours into my shift, and he was already the second sobbing person I had talked to. I knew there would be many more before my day ended. It was December 2010 and I was working as an operator at the Pennsylvania Office of Unemployment Compensation. It was a rough month. Many people were ending their run on unemployment compensation after collecting for nearly two years. It wasn’t because they had jobs. It was because the special period of extended benefits that allowed people to stay on the program ended every December. None of...

Creigh Deeds, Virginia state senator . (Matt McClain/The Washington Post) He wakes up, and even before he opens his eyes, he can see his beautiful, delusional son . Gus , Creigh Deeds thinks . He lies in bed a few minutes more, trying to conjure specific images. Gus dancing. Gus playing the banjo. Gus with the puppies. Any images of Gus other than the final ones he has of his 24-year-old, mentally ill son attacking him and then walking away to kill himself, images that intrude on his days and nights along with the questions that he will begin asking himself soon, but not yet. A few minutes more. Gus fishing. Gus looking at him. Gus smiling at him. Time to start the day. He gets out of bed, where a piece of the shotgun he had taken apart in those last days of his son’s life is still hidden under the mattress. He goes outside to feed the animals, first the chickens in the yard and then the horses in the red-sided barn. He leads the blind thoroughbred outside with a bucket of feed, t...

Deerbrook Farm is a love story, straight out of the True Romance series . It’s about a young girl named Betsy Skillin , born in New York City and raised in Europe, who met Tom O’Connell, an American soldier, on a train traveling from Frankfurt to Paris. She was 14, and he was 20. Their chance meeting led to several years of friendly correspondence. Somewhere along the way, Tom met another woman and married. Betsy married Nolan Welmaker . Tom developed a successful career in advertising sales, and Betsy became known in San Antonio as a successful mother, community volunteer and entrepreneur, opening Violet Talk Gifts in Alamo Heights. I ran into Tom at a business function after he was married and had a daughter,” Betsy says. “I wrote my phone number on the back of his business card and gave it to him.” She invited him to visit San Antonio and then went on with her life. “In 1980, my phone rang,” Betsy continues. “A deep voice said, ‘This is a voice from your past,’ and it turned out...