Yard Sale, Shmard Sale

Did I mention I hate yard sales? I seem to forget I hate them until I have them. Then ((smack))! Yard sale day is here and I remember that I HATE YARD SALES!

So yesterday was the big day of yard sale hating day, but with a twist. We expected nice warm weather. We expected, in fact, hot weather. After all, it is nearing July and by now we are usually cooking with fire in these parts of Oregon. But someone has a sense of humor and after dressing in shorts, flip flops and a t shirt it chilled off nicely, threatening to rain and the wind blew hard.

Freezing.

All day.

Freezing cold.

People would drive by, look out the window from their warm heated cars and not even get out!

Freezing.

All day.

Freezing cold.

An occasional drive by looker in a warm, heated car.

Still freezing.

And then, a huge group of cars would come, everyone would get out, everyone would run through items on display and then run back to their warm, heated car.

And we...froze!

All day.

The second twisted element of this yard sale is a dear friend that I will introduce here now on my blog. She is my great friend Naomi, we have know each other for a little more than 10 years and our families get along great. This is our friend that we lived with when our own house flooded. Yesterday appeared to be payback. And I'm still contemplating the continuation of our friendship.

Mike and Naomi drove up in their cars on Friday night, dropped off two car loads of crap into our garage. We ate pizza and Naomi returned bright and early the next morning to set up. Their crap scattered out all over our lawn, Noami proceeded to sell one thing after another. The first hour almost half of her wonderful yard sale items were sold at dirt cheap prices. Within the next two hours our whole lot of sale items were reduced to about 25% remaining to sell. 23% still belonged to me. I had sold nothing! Nothing at all. Oh wait, I did sell one $3 item.

Then, to salt the fresh wound, out came the evil side of Naomi. This is the side that comes out on occasion when Howard referrers to her as the "meanest person he knows". Her daughter reached for the money box and asked if she could count it....to which Naomi replies..."No honey, it isn't appropriate to count money in public with people watching. Plus we wouldn't want to make Howard and Mandy feel bad." And shortly after follows up with a comment like this. "We have made so much money, a whole lot more than Howard and Mandy have". Only to follow with "Hey, thanks for offering to have the yard sale at your house. This is a great venue and we really sold a whole lot more than you did!" What a lovely lady she is. I just love her. So much so, I wanted to squeeze her until her head popped off! We ended the day with $40 more than we started with and a whole garage still full of stuff. Noami wouldn't officially disclose how much money she made. She didn't want to make us feel bad, blessed soul of hers.

This is why I hate yard sales. $40 total. Not worth it. Hours of preparing, and the cost of newspaper ads, signs and take out food. $40 minus $5 minus $20 . You do the math people! $15 for about 10 hours of work! And, a messy garage to boot.

But don't worry. Please don't fret.

Noami's garage is clean.

They are probably eating dinner with a banquet table in their garage as you read this.

(And let's not forget, they made more money than we did.)

So this is my vow. And I tell you now, my reader, so you will hold me to it. Next time I mention these two words YARD and SALE in close proximity to each other. Remind me of this: The next yard sale I have, everything will be free! I'm not going to bother negotiating with someone about a price for silk flowers I haven't used in 10 years. Or a puzzle I'm not sure has all the pieces, or a candle that was never even opened.

I'm just going to say, "Here ma'am. Please take it, enjoy this fine candle that doesn't match anything in my house, and by the way ma'am...my friend Naomi, she is a keeper, even if she did make more money than I did".

Mandy