Lamb and Frog

Yes, after the purge of the kids’ room, I had enough stuff for another garage sale. (In case I didn’t mention it, I had one in early June as well.) So, here I am, on the computer in the garage (Evil Jamie says our family is “somewhat overconnected”) waiting for the afternoon rush that will occur when the elementary school behind our house (the one that my kids will NOT be going to this year) lets out for the day and parents and grandparents who are picking up their kids see my signs. I had a pretty good morning…so good that I’m hoping that the afternoon rush will clean me out to the point that I can just pack up what’s left, cancel the ad on Craig’s List, and skip tomorrow morning all together. If not, I’m done tomorrow at noon no matter what. Garage sales are not my favorite thing…not even close.

As a rule, I purge a drawer here, a closet there, and make regular trips to Goodwill to donate my unwanted stuff (Goodwill is on the way to Target, so I pass by once every week or two, if not more). For the major purging I’ve been doing lately though, there was just too much stuff to cram into the VW and I thought I’d try to make a buck or two. The money has been all right, but the stupidity? off the charts people, off the charts.

• I have everything arranged on tables outside the garage. I still have people eyeballing my husband’s tools, the boom box, and the computer inside the garage.
• It’s before 8:00 a.m. and I have people who just bought $10 worth of stuff wanting me to change a $100 bill. Hmmmm. That will put me completely out of change for the rest of the day unless I close up shop (or–ACK!–leave the kids in charge), pack up the kids, and go break the hundred at the closest grocery store. I don’t think so. So they paid me in change instead (a roll of dimes and a bunch of quarters…gee, thanks). At least I can be sure the change wasn’t counterfeit.
• I had a group of people who, instead of piling their items up for me to total, took them one at a time to the car, told me what they took, and then paid for each item individually. I don’t think they were trying to steal anything, they were just stupid…seriously people, select your items, let me total them, pay, then take them to the car. Come to think of it, they’re the same people who tried grotesquely lowballing me on my VHS tapes (documented below) and one of the groups eyeballing stuff in the garage (documented above). If that carload got any stupider, they’d be on Dubya’s staff.
• Despite an abundance of parking, someone parked directly across my neighbor’s driveway and he damn near hit her as he was backing out to go to work.
• I had a guy ask me if I would take a quarter apiece for Disney VHS tapes…still in the box and marked at $1 each. Uh, no. They’re $2 or $3 at the swap meet, here they’re $1. Will you take $20 for the whole table (30+ videos). Uh no. They’re $1…at those prices, non stupid people snap them up and they are one of my best sellers. As a matter of fact, I had a lady buy $20 worth (16 boxed at $1 each and 8 unboxed at  50 cents each) later on…geez dude, if I wanted to GIVE them away, I’d just take them to the kids’ nursery school (which is where the leftover tapes and books are headed).
• People are also balking at paying $2 for a pair of VANS skate shoes that are practically brand new (Stinky only wore them a couple of times…I just bought him a pair of slip ons for school this year). If those don’t sell, I’m putting them back on the shoe shelf.

Despite the ongoing  parade of the stupid and obnoxious, I have had some good customers too and I’m getting rid of quite a bit of stuff.

Even though I have been busy purging, painting, and putting out fires (not literally, but knowing my kids I’m not holding my breath), I have finished some knitting (but not taken pictures, sorry). I finished my red Nutkin socks and a pair of anklets in Brown Sheep Wildfoote (Brown Sugar colorway…it’s purty). I also finished two of the Christmas scarves. I have not, however, “finished” any of these items and the pile of hand knits needing proper finishing is growing unwieldy on my dresser. I’ve got some more home chores (carpet cleaning, pulling weeds) to get done and a little over one week before the kids go back to school. Perhaps then I will get my finished objects actually finished and post some pictures…although it seems like any time I say something like that in writing it’s like a guarantee that it won’t happen.

I’ve still got the Montego Bay scarf (I’m almost through ball 3 of 4 and a fair amount of ball 4 will be for fringe)  and a couple of Christmas scarves OTN. The sock drought has also ended and, in addition to the two pairs I finished, I’ve cast on another pair for Stinky, another pair for The Dad, and a pair of Primavera for me (using dark blue/black Trekking handpainted). I’ve also continued to work on Stinky’s big blanket (ball 9 of 12) and my Log Cabin blanket (piece here, piece there), as well as doing a row here and there on all the other UFOs that are laying around the house.

I’ve done some reading too. I finished Robinson Crusoe, A Clockwork Orange, Lolita (read by Jeremy Irons!), and Daisy Miller on audio book and The Invention of Everything Else by Samantha Hunt in print. The Samantha Hunt book was excellent. It was a historical novel (and not a ridiculously large one…The Other Boleyn Girl and The Boleyn Inheritance are garage sale fodder) about Nikola Tesla. I’m working on her debut novel, The Seas, now. For what it’s worth, I don’t think I could have read A Clockwork Orange in print. The heavy dialect was perfectly done in the audio version though and made the novel really understandable. I finished Lolita during the painting project. Now there’s a masterpiece (and I think I might be in love with Jeremy Irons…sexy, sexy voice). If you’ve never actually read it, it is quite different, and much more complex, than all of the stereotypes and cliches that abound in the mainstream media.

Oh yeah, and somewhere in all the chaos, and the sporadic posts, this blog had its first birthday (June 6th). Hard to imagine.