Holy Huge Yard Sale!

Seriously.

I have no idea where all this stuff came from. Granted, it wasn't all mine, but still. I am shocked myself. I am also exhausted. Putting on a yard sale is almost as much work as having a baby. Harder perhaps, because I didn't have any drugs to help me with this one. My best friend Dawn, my mom G. and I all decided it would be a great idea to have a yard sale so I started working on pricing things on Monday. It has been non-stop since then. The best story is Thursday though. Let me tell you about Thursday...

Thursday morning I got up bright and early and the unloading event commenced at around 8:30. First my parents brought over their first pick-up load. We unloaded and laughed and had a great time. Then Dawn showed up with her first pickup load and we still laughed and giggled "Oh what fun we are going to have!". Then my dad came back with his second pickup load and Dawn arrived with her second pickup load and I started to think "hmmm.. this is a lot of stuff." Then both my dad and Dawn came back with a third pickup load. I was starting to feel like I lived at The Salvation Army. I was hot and dirty and smelly by this point and thinking "What was I thinking!". As we started to set up the tables (which took us almost 4 hours to do!) my neighbors were starting to come out of their houses and point at us while shaking their heads in amusement. One of them was brave enough to come over and say "I've never seen a yard sale this big!". Another neighbor yelled at us "It looks like a mini Wal-Mart over there!". They laughed for a while and then came over and bought some of my junk (so who got the last laugh?).

We finally stopped at 9:00 that night so that we could shower and make the signs. I had been diligently checking the weather and we were in for low 80's with some clouds. I was feeling excited and needed to get some sleep because I wanted to get up by 5:30 to make sure everything was ready for our yard sale by 6:45. It officially started at 7:00 but, like a boy scout, I like to be prepared. Mark and Kye (our dog) slept outside to safe guard the goods and Dawn slept with me in the master bedroom. I had a hard time falling asleep because I was so excited but I finally managed. Then at 3:30 I sat bolt upright in bed. I heard something and smelled something bad (and it wasn't Dawn).

The sound I heard was water. Water hitting things outside. What I couldn't determine is whether or not it was my neighbor's sprinklers or rain. I figured it was sprinklers because I had been checking the weather report faithfully and there had been no mention of rain. I decided to get up anyway. I looked out the window and sure enough it was ... rain. I sounded the alarm by yelling "THIS IS A LEVEL 3 YARD SALE EMERGENCY!" and running around the house without my bra on. Dawn and I quickly headed outside to try and cover up the goods. We had about 3 tarps to cover all of this up.

Where was my husband you ask? He was just waking up. He had been under a table and since he had worked graveyard the night before and not slept yet that day he was exhausted. I forgave him a little and then yelled at him to do something and save the yard sale. Dawn and I were running around like chickens with our heads cut off trying to put stuff under tables and under tarps. I came up with the brilliant idea of cutting up garbage sacks and laying them over things. Things were not looking good. We were pretty much up after that and we weren't too hopeful about people showing up. But never count out the determined yard saler. I tell you what. We had tons of people there at 6:30 who came and started shopping. They simply lifted the tarps and looked underneath. Dawn and I covered and uncovered things with tarps 8 different times on Friday as it rained all day but we still managed to sell around $900.00 worth of stuff. On Saturday we didn't have any rain but we did have customers and we managed to make around $1,700.00 between the 3 families. My share of the loot was around 675.00. Not too shabby. Dawn and I also cooked baked goods and sold those. I made cookies and sold them for $2.50 a dozen and they went like hot cakes.

Am I going to do another yard sale any time soon? NO WAY!

Well... let me go and count my money again.