The Yard Sale Free-for-all!

My newspaper ad read, "Friday - 8:00 am." HA! My hubman heard people outside talking at 6:30! My daughter got here at 7:00 and had to work her way through the crowd to get to the front door. There were at least 20 of them!

We unloaded the tables from the back of her truck and started setting them up. These are the heavy long tables from church, not card tables. My daughter is very small but she's ripped from working out. I'm very middle aged and NOT ripped. These men stood there and watched us cart one table after the other, five in all, without offering to help - but all the time asking, "How much longer???" Oh, I had a few answers for them, all right! My hubman opens the garage door so we can start bringing out things and, "Gangway!" These bunch of nitwits charges right smack dab into our garage and starts tearing open boxes! I've never in my life seen anything to equal it!!!

My hubman hollered for them to back out of the garage, that they are not going to be rummaging through our belongings but to wait until we have things setup. They didn't like that at all and started grumbling. I felt like crowd control at a middle aged garage sale fiasco! Hubman had to leave for work (poor planning on our part) leaving only the two of us left to manage this wild bunch. While we frantically pulled stuff out they were still managing to sneak back in so I finally hit the garage door button to get their attention and hollered out, "Look, this is our stuff and it's NOT for sale! The garage sale items are over here. Please stay over here and out of our things!

One man had a pile of things he'd collected and while he kept looking, a woman started sneaking things out of his pile when he caught her. They stood and screamed curses at one another! Such drama - no one had anticipated this! One jackass, with an armload of stuff asked me how much I'd take for my daughter. I actually got in his face and told him either pay up or leave. Sheesh!

By this time, my grandsons showed up (better them than the police...) and helped us out. Even though it was a school day, mom called them and had them earn extra credit battling yard sale divas. We found out that most of these people actually knew each other and are vendors here in town. I just wish I knew where...Nasty people. I'd hate to support them!

The good news is that Saturday the weather was much cooler and the people were much nicer!(Sgt. Dub - I wore your tee-shirt & got to share your story with lots of folks, so now you've got to run for office!); we did sell a lot of things and made enough money for it to be worth it. The Salvation Army is coming to pick-up the rejects (most of my unfinished wood "projects" and some furniture).

After resting Sunday, and letting the spine realign, this next week will be spent actually packing up the inside. Unfortunately, our move-in date has been set back to Sunday. Again, I thank you for you good wishes, prayers and the knowledge that at one time or another, we've all been there, done that - some more than others~THANK YOU!!!