Monday, May 26, 2008

It was a plan, not a promise

I mentioned in an earlier post that we finally got our big room in the basement painted & carpeted, and Kev finished putting up all the baseboards & trim around the windows & doors. The ceiling will be next, when we get the moola to do it. I'll post photos sometime soon... when we get it arranged nicely. It's still kind of a mess right now.

To prepare for the carpet installation, everything in that big room (about 42' x 18') had to be removed... so we stuck it all into either my craft room or the utility room. We've moved out some of the big stuff, like the sofas and the TV... but for the rest of the stuff, I wanted to do some major sorting. There were some things I came across that I not only forgot I owned, but I wondered why I was keeping them. I'm such a packrat. So I decided to make a change...

Joyce and Mike both want to earn money this summer. I told them that if they set up and ran a garage sale, they could split the profits. I suggested this Memorial weekend would be a great time to have a sale, because of all the traffic there would be on M-20.

Truthfully, Joycie did most of the setting up work last week, because Mike was at school and over in Bay City. Kevin, Sammy and I helped her. It was a TON of work getting everything out, dusted off, set up and priced. Ugh. We came up with a bunch of stuff, and then Joycie's Gramma and Aunt Janet gave her a bunch of stuff to sell, too (and told her to keep the money).

We ran an ad in the local paper and put a sign out at M-20... & another sign at the end of our driveway. (We have a long driveway, and you can't see the house from the road.) We started the sale Friday morning with plans to run it through Monday.

I got up early Friday morning to go down to the corner (1/2 mile) and set the sign on the side of M-20. Kevin was leaving for work; the lucky boy got stuck with a 16-hour shift Friday. He stopped and chatted with me while I pounded into the ground the 2 hockey sticks I sawed up for sign posts (they were part of a group I bought way on sale, and who knew they made hockey sticks for lefties?!). While I was pounding, a white van turned onto our road. I told Kev to watch and see if he pulled into our drive, and Kev told me he didn't. But he did. He was driving back out our driveway as I was driving back in... with the garage doors and the house wide open and 2 sleeping kids upstairs. Kinda freaked me out. Also, the van's windows were so darkly tinted that I couldn't see into them. But, no drama. I think the guy saw the baby stuff and left. (Yes, baby stuff! With our baby being 13 years old... I finally agreed to get rid of some stuff.)

So Joycie and I did her garage sale Friday, and Mike arrived mid-afternoon.

Having a garage sale is a lot of work and really, really, really boring. My idea that Memorial weekend would be a good time to have one turns out to be a pretty crappy plan. Sure, we live out in the country, but we just haven't had many shoppers. So when Mike's mom called him Saturday afternoon and asked if they could skip the sale Sunday and join his family out at a lake on a pontoon for the day, I said go on ahead. I told them I'd watch their sale Sunday. Then I found out it would require my watching it Monday, too. What the heck.

So here I sit, comfortable at our picnic table with my laptop. Since I'm outside, I rigged up a box lid taped to my laptop cover to shade it, and I have to say... it works like a charm. They should make laptops with a slide out cover for working outside. (I'm guessing that's not an original thought, and the invention is likely already patented.)

I was up and opened yesterday by 7am and working on my laptop until about 6pm. I got so much work done (company work), and it felt good. Very few interruptions by shoppers, but those that came did some good shopping. Kevin suggested I bag the sale for today, but I told him that I not only kicked ass on work yesterday, but that I really enjoyed working outside doing it. It is gorgeous, partly sunny and breezy. Absolutely gorgeous. Getting some of my backlog of work done in this kind of setting... heaven!

The one thing I do regret is that I am kind of tied down... I wanted to paint a couple more coats on this old wood desk I started painting on Friday, but I can't because someone may show up. It's an old desk that I bought at a garage sale ages ago, and it was in pretty crappy shape then. I painted it a dark green and dark blue (body blue, desk top and drawer fronts green, & it looked really good), but those colors do not go well with our new basement walls of Apricot Butter. I keep an old Mac computer on this desk, and I want to continue to do so. The Mac is chock full of cool games. And I had this gallon of red paint... so I'm painting the desk red, and it's going to look great down in the basement. But red paint is difficult... I've got 2 coats on the desk now, and it will need at least another 2, maybe 3. That's red paint for ya.

I also wanted to do some weeding in my flower and herb gardens. But those are out back, and it's too much of a hassle... I could leave Sam in charge of the sale, but I don't think that's fair. He'd be a little out of his league, and being in charge of a garage sale with strangers coming up is just not something I'd do to him.

But I get to work on my laptop. Thank goodness I sprung for that wireless router.

I also get to watch a lot of bird action. I have some photos I'll have to post later. Right away on Friday morning when we opened the garage doors, we had some Swallows that kept flying in and out of the garage. I haven't seen Swallows around our house before, so I was thrilled. They would land in the garage, and I was so happy... tried several times to get photos before I finally was able to do so. But then the bird shit on the stemware we have for sale was kind of a downer. Now I chase the little buggers out as soon as they come in.

Mike and I watched a couple of Robins going at it for a while on Saturday. They were seriously scrapping. Flying at each other and making a racket big time. The 2 of them were like a ball of furious feathers. Then they'd separate and land on the ground a few feet away from each other, wait a bit and go at it again. I was like, "holy cow!" Mike said, "Robins do like to fight each other; they must talk a lot of trash." Cracked me up.

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