In addition, I’m exhausted, since staying up until 1:00 might not be the best idea when you get up at 5:00. But
MY GOD, it was so exciting!! And yay us! And a big fat woo-hoo to Fleury, who is
clearly some sort of superhero. UltraGoalieMan! And to Malone, for being such a badass, playing with his mashed up face. And to Talbot for saving the fucking night, even if it did result in me re-injuring my neck. And to Crosby for being so damned cute. I mean awesome. And especially Sykora, for pulling a Babe Ruth and
calling that shit! Woo-Hoo!!
Oh – my neck. Yeah, see, I’m old now. And when you’re old, you have things like terribly painful fucked up necks that are caused by things that you don’t even remember you did. Not like lifting a truck or anything. More like. . .oh. . .bending over. Or looking to the right. Or thinking about looking to the right. Getting old rocks!
I’m sad to report that I have very little to say about the yard sale. Because it sucked. In perfect Murphy’s Law fashion, we had a tornado watch that day. And nothing says “come to my yard sale” like a fucking tornado!
We had a few people, but not enough to justify all the work we did to get it set up. Luckily, my aunt has a big porch, so we were able to keep everything dry (except me, since I felt bad and was shuttling people to their cars with my umbrella). Right at 7:00, we got some “commandos”. These are the crazy old ladies that scour yard sales to stock up on the shit that they will turn around and sell at their own yard sales and flea markets. They’re mean and cheap and bitchy and they can all bite me. One of them got pissy with me because she thought my books were too expensive at a dollar. Maybe they were, but I can’t see taking less than a dollar for good hardback and those nice large soft cover books that are all new releases and bestsellers from the past six months. I give a ton of books away, so it’s not the money, but it bugged me. She actually yelled at me:
Crazy yelling lady: “You can get books at the flea market for 25 cents.”
Gina (in a very sweet voice): “Really? Well, what are you doing here, then? You should head right on over to that flea market and get you some books! Buh-bye!”
See why I am not cut out for yard sales?
After the rained ended, I did get a couple avid readers like myself who bought a stack of books and didn’t flinch at the price. But that was about it. My mom and Aunt sold some clothes – they are both big time clotheshorses who wear and discard beautiful designer things. If only I wore the same size (fucking fours), I would have done some shopping of my own. And by “shopping”, I mean “taking whatever I wanted and not paying anyone anything”. My mom is the worst – she had tons of things with tags still on them. Like freakishly expensive things – one was an absolutely gorgeous tiny little dressy sleeveless shirt from some boutique with a price of $132. Now, she didn’t pay that much for it, but even on sale I’m sure it was pricey. And at the current price of $2, it’s a serious bargain. One girl bought a bunch of stuff and gave us her email for next time. Smart girl.
Another lady bought some clothes too, but kept trying to cheat my mom. She would have 13 items and then grab another and say, OK, that makes 12. Um, no. And then my mom would recount them to show her that there were more and then she’d try again. And my mom thinks she stole some stuff, too. Awesome.
Aside from those few brave souls (and that one Cheaty McKlepto), the day was a bust. I read a book all day and my mom and aunt started drinking wine at 9:30. In their defense, it felt like noon since we had gotten up so early – plus hello? Tornado watch. If that’s not a free pass to drink at 9:30, I don’t know what is.
We ended up packing everything into Aunt Twin’s garage and planning to do it again at the end of the month. I intend to take the time to gather more shit and have a big ole dollar extravaganza just to get rid of it. And anything that doesn’t sell is going straight to Goodwill on the way home.
Oh – and we found out later that we would have had more customers, but they got poached. There was a garage sale that was right after you turned off the main road into the plan and folks were going there and leaving. We ended up going out after the rain to put out some more signs (all but the one at the main road were cardboard and the rain pretty much killed them) and wee ended up walking over to the garage sale to commiserate. The guy there told us that people kept dropping by and asking about the items we had listed in the ad. And I guess he was mad that they weren’t interested in his crap and he sent them away instead of pointing them in our direction. Way to benefit from out newspaper ad, Craigslist ad and giant painted wooden sign, Fred Sanford.
And sadly, I didn’t get any photos of any of the Crazy, either, because I didn’t want to take myyyy precccciiiioooouuuuussssss my camera out in the torrential downpour. Boo!
My Very Last Nerve 