Apparently, in the small corner of the world where I live, people like to call yard sales tag sales. That’s cool. A little annoying maybe, but cool. So YES, we had the GREAT TAG SALE OF 2009 yesterday. I think we were all surprised at the amount of stuff we found to go out. I ended up selling quite a lot of stuff, nothing for more than $15. Our biggest “ticket” item didn’t go, but I was happy with the money we made. Not nothing, that’s for sure. Enough to cover the cost of the GRE anyway. My Mom really did well- she had a few things to sell- a set of drums, a canoe, a baby’s crib and travel system (pretty much new), a hug dog kennel and various other items. And yes, she sold every single one of them. It is really awesome. Especially since the crib and baby things mostly went to a family (a mom and aunt, twins, actually) who were pulling together to buy things for a younger girl who got pregnant unexpectedly. My Mom gave them a break on the price for almost new things, and considering why the stuff was bought in the first place, it seemed like it finally found its home. Because they found things for so cheap, the can afford to get even more things for the impending baby and hopefully give this girl something to be grateful for, a leg up. I have really mixed feelings about unwanted teen pregnancy (I say unwanted because my mother was technically a teen when she had me, a married teen…), but if there is one thing I know, all you can do is love. Judgement doesn’t work, lectures and advice often fail, and anger is pointless. The one thing this mother and aunt had to offer the girl was love, and a little bit of money to get her started, and it was nice to be a part of that. My Dad even loaded it all into his truck and drove it across town for them. I didn’t really do anything to help, I just sat and chatted and called my husband to do some heavy lifting with my Dad, but I was proud of my family and their desire to serve others. I think we all felt some closure as the truck drove away, and I think my brother would have felt the same way.*
I really should sit down and work on a longer post dealing with the type of people that come to yard sales since I think we encountered quite a few characters. My personal favorite was the old gentleman who rode up on a scooter, bought a throw pillow for a dollar, and spent half an hour trying to shove it into the different cracks and crevices on his bike. (He got it in in the end.) Or the woman who walked around with her nose in the air, clearly feeling disdain for our selection. Seriously, it’s not Sears, I’m sorry we don’t have place mats. There was the family with the RUDE children who tried to STEAL stuff (seriously, a dollar isn’t cheap enough for ya?) who kept coming back, again and again and again…There was the weird guy who kept telling me, “You should just take that back to WalMart, they’ll give you a giftcard for it!” (for things that were bought years ago by other people in different states…) Yeah. It was an interesting day. Camper seemed to like sitting under the tent top in the grass, wiggling his toes. He ate and slept well yesterday (John was on sleep/food duty) and played with us outside when he got the chance. He spent the last hour of the day in a baby bathtub (didn’t sell) eating a banana. The good life. In the last few minutes of our sale, the ice cream man pulled up in our yard, and Camper had his first experience perusing the side of the van, looking at all the pictures of ice cream and waiting his turn in line. I didn’t get an ice cream because John had just gone and gotten me one from the gas station as a surprise! (I heart him.)
All in all, I’m glad we did it. My mother is talking about making this an annual event. Next year I’ll wear sunscreen.
*Long story short…My little brother was on the male side of a teen pregnancy. He dropped his life to become a dad, bought all the necessities himself and took the baby into our home when things became difficult for the mother (they were no longer together), only to find out it wasn’t his months later. It was the saddest thing to happen to our family to date, and left us with a lot of difficult feelings and changes to deal with, along with LOTS of baby stuff. It feels trite to even blog about it, but it’s definitely no secret. I think I struggle with lingering feelings more than most of my family does since I was in England when it all happened. I almost came home, but it was made clear that it wouldn’t of helped, and I needed to just keep on keeping on.