My old boss made me turn off my work phone at 6 PM. It felt weird at first, but I stopped dreading Sundays.

Oh man, that's the best kind of wrong turn. I bet @abbyreed is right and it felt way longer, especially if you were stuck behind someone in a giant hot dog suit. At least you got a free workout and a weird story out of it.

But vintage mixers can be a safety hazard, right?

Funny you should mention that, my aunt used to be a florist and she had a whole rant about those foam bricks. She called them "floral sponges of doom" because they'd crumble into a weird green dust all over her workbench. Always thought it was just a mess thing, never even considered the water waste angle. Makes sense though, they do feel like a soggy block of nothing after a day or two.

Exactly, it stops being junk the second you know where it came from. Found a chipped teacup at a yard sale years ago, and the lady told me her mother drank from it every morning for fifty years. Couldn't just leave it behind after that. Now it sits on my kitchen counter holding pens. Makes you wonder about all the quiet, ordinary hopes people have for each other. Probably simple things, like hoping he remembered to eat lunch, or that they'd get one more trip to the lake together.