Garage Sale Mania
10:06 PM - Sunday, Aug. 24, 2003
What a busy, busy weekend. I am very happy it is now a thing of the past.
Friday night was the big garage sale set up. Band fams were able to take their junk, er uh, former treasures out to the site to set up. That was all fine and good, but it rained earlier in the day and the skies were threatening all around us. As I walked around with those little orange flags (which I numbered) like surveyors use, planting the WIRE stakes at each booth, I was praying "Please, Lord, don't strike me with electricity as I stand in the middle of this wide open field with a hand full of metal." I am pleased to report He heard my prayer and I am still here. He also must have heard all of our prayers for no rain. We covered our junk with tarps, etc, but luckily that wasn't needed.
After all the setup, I went home and made 6 batches of oatmeal cookie dough. I baked about 4 dozen cookies. I guess that means I ate several dozen cookies in dough. Yes, I am a cookiedoughaholic. It's just not something I usually talk about. My dear hub took the cookies over to the dozen or so boy scouts camping at the garage sale site, guarding all the good overnight.
The next morning, the hub is out of bed and gone by 6 am, just to double check things and be at the site in case anyone had questions. (As I've said, this was our big project as VPs of the band boosters.) Frankly, I think ungodly hours of 6 am on weekends should be outlawed. Sometime around 7 the hub called me. I slept through it. He called my cell phone. I slept through it. He called the boys. Son#1 answered, talked to dad, hung up, and slept on. I finally did wake up, threw on clothes, running through the house screaming for the boys to jump up too.
On top of just waking up, I had gathered even MORE junk the night before to take to the sale. What was I thinking? So all that had to be hauled to the car, then to the site. It's times like that that I certainly appreciate having big strapping sons. I just went to our booth and left them to haul stuff. At times like that, it is also a pain to be a woman, as I found myself compelled to rearrange our junk, dust it, categorize it, etc. For goodness sakes,lady, it's a JUNK SALE.
Son#1 was very helpful, helping us at the booth, helping customers and friends haul things to their car, running errands as needed. . . .During the 3+ hours of the garage sale, I think I saw Son#2 twice. The second time I saw him, he had obviously had tremendous luck shopping the booths. He was wearing star shaped sunglasses, a hat covered in Micky Mouse pins, a Tasmanian Devil tie, knee pads of bright orange with rainbow striped elastic bands, necklaces, and he was carrying an umbrella. That boy. Since it was his birthday weekend (more on that to come), we gave him a break. He was enjoying playing and goofing off. He got off this time ONLY!!
The sale itself went well. We rec'd many compliments from people regarding how organized it all was.
Then it all just fell apart at the end. One band dad had volunteered to rent a truck to haul away the leftover junk after the sale. Very, very generous. I had made a number of calls to area charities and they would not send a truck to pick up. The deal was supposed to be that everyone hauled their leftovers to the truck, helped load the truck, then they could leave. WELL. That WAS the plan. Unfortunately, my overly generous hub was helping. The line began to form and lengthen as people waited to put their stuff on the truck. So dear, stupid, overly generous hub says "Oh, just leave it, we'll load it." AAAARRRRGGGGHHHHHHH People leave absolute PILES of total trash. At least they did box things up.
Then the real mess started as hoards of. . .gosh, I don't want to use any derogatory terms that would offend. So let's just call them rag-pickers. Scavengers. They descended upon the leftovers and started dumping box after box and just throwing things here and there in their search for stuff for themselves. I do have a heart and realize these people have to be pretty far down the food chain to be willing to pick through the leftovers. I realize they needed what they could find, most likely. But dangit--did they have to trash the place? I held my tongue for a bit, then finally I had to just fly in and shoo them all away. Literally waving my hands, plowing into the middle of the group and the mess, yelling at them "shoo, shoo! No more! Go away!" Thankfully, they did.
Son#1 and I got to spend the next couple of hours picking everything back up and reorganizing the mess. The hub and son#2 took one pickup truck load to a charity. A couple of other parents took pity on us and came and let us load their SUVs for a haul to the charities too. That was great. The majority of the 125 families had high-tailed it out of there as fast as they could. And I can't blame them. Most of the spots were in the middle of this empty lot, under the hot sun the entire time. I, fortunately, had our booth up next to the wall of the adjoining grocery store, so we were in the shade all morning. If I had been in the sun all day, you can be durn sure I wouldn't hang around to help. I'm just not a good samaritan when I am sweaty and worn out.
We had no choice on this clean up, being in charge of it all. But it was all loaded up and hauled off. Oh, with the exception of an enormous glass topped patio table and four huge chairs. Frankly, a nice set, just needing new cushions and a coat of paint. The hub went to one charity--nope, they wouldn't take it. Another--nope, didn't want it. So the hub hauls it home. I tell him (and once again this will reinforce the fact that men do NOT listen) that I am going to call a friend who is furnishing her sons house at college with garage sale finds. I called to tell her if she wants the set, it's in our back drive. She is quite excited. It is not until today that I find out the table almost fell out of the pickup, so the hub just dumped it by the highway!!!! So this (former) friend will most likely wonder why I wasted her time. Haven't had a chance to call her back with an apology.
Well, much more happened this weekend, but I have frankly just about written my little fingers off. Tomorrow I will write about the wedding we went to, my sister coming up and my youngest son's 14th birthday! FOURTEEN!! How can I remember his birth and baby-dom so clearly when he is getting so big? Anyway, he had a great day of which I will write about later.
As for me, it's lights out.
Night, now.
