The Unexpected Wonders of Holding a Garage Sale: Day Two
Thursday's sale started out slowly. The sky was mournful and gray and the city road crew were doing their thing, filling the street with trucks. I learned that I had more in common with these men than you would have thought. I basically know nothing about roadwork and so apparently do they. Places on the road that were mostly smooth were skipped over including the curve just before our driveway. They left a nice incipient pothole there that is very likely to get us when the road is covered with snow and ice. The rest of the road was uneven and messy. The teacher in me gave them a D-...better than nothing, but certainly not an outstanding effort.
Since the customers were not appearing, I had a chance to read my story (thus far) to Rod.
"You left out the important part," he said.
"Oh, really? And what was that?"
"About all the work I did to help you set up the sale."
"How inconsiderate of me," I said, "Let me rectify that right now."
I guess that means going back to all his previous comments such as, "Do you really need that?" "Every room is filled with your stuff" and the classic "I feel like I'm living with my mother." Encouragement to purge is a gift he keeps giving. Of course when he acceded to in the inevitability of the sale happening, he and Ryan carried up the tables to the garage. I sweetened the pot by telling him that we would have to clean out the garage anyway and this would be a good time to do it and we could even go up to the garage attic and get rid of stuff. Stuff, I assured him that would leave one way or another and never enter the house again.
I felt him getting into the spirit of the thing. We rigged up a rope across the canoe supports to hang the dresses and jackets. It gave him a chance to practice a new knot he'd learned and with the help of several bungee cords, we created a thing of "beauty" (if not a joy forever).
He even contributed some shirts to our clothesline. (If only he'd try on the two dozen pants hanging in his closet since 1998 that just possibly might be too small). Also, he didn't continue to complain about having the sale...I appreciate that he doesn't hold on to anger, when I don't "submit and obey". That actually never made it into our marriage vows...the unwritten ones that did are more like "support and allow", which means when he takes off for North Dakota to hunt in a few weeks (pheasant feathers-0.25 a piece/ 5 for $1.00) I will stay home and fend off the plagues of locusts, blizzards and other natural disasters that might swoop down without a word of complaint. He should be able to handle a garage full of odds and ends for another day or two.
Finally a car pulls into the driveway. It is our friend Katie and her mother Candie, who had been to the dentist. We cut them pieces of apple crisp and sit and visit, totally undisturbed by other shoppers.
Eventually a few more customers come by, including a woman in a Harley Davidson tank top and long blond hair tied back in a ponytail who called me "honey." When she suggested that the white sign at the end of the road wasn't as visible as it should be, I decided right away to change it with the bright yellow sign at the end of the driveway. Why would I disagree with a woman who owns a motorcycle and wears the same size shoes as me? I know this because she bought the super cool orange strappy sandals that were way too high for me and the suede Borns with the evergreen shaped treads on the bottoms. (A real bargain at $1 a pair)
The lack of customers allow me to bake 4 more apple pies, fix a casserole and sort through newspapers. Robin and Lexi come home and as we are closing up, we find a baby garter snake on the driveway.
"Look at the cute worm, Grammy," Lexi says. She keeps calling it a worm even though she knows it's a snake. It does look like a worm; only about 6 inches long and thinner than a pencil. Robin gets a bucket and pulls some grass. We will have to figure out what this baby eats. It's spending the night on the window seat, the bucket closed off with a wire mesh colander.
"Oh, by the way Mom," Robin says, "why do you have that wimpy yellow sign at the end of the road?"
