"What if I have a party and no one comes?"

Today was The Great Yard Sale, heralded by three days of paid advertising in the local newspaper. We carted all of our precious, semi-precious, too-good-to-be-trash, and what-the-heck?-some-sucker-might-buy-it belongings outside and arranged them on the lawn.

In our town, you have to buy a permit to have a Yard Sale and you can't put up any fliers or signs pointing to your house; hence the ad in the paper.

It seemed like everything was good to go.

Of course...

It's Mother's Day
Yesterday's rain showed up this morning
It's cold
We live on a very off-the-beaten-path road

Early arrivals caused us to be concerned about what crowd control measures would be required. I mean, there are only two of us. Braced for the onslaught, we staged ourselves at strategic points to answer questions, haggle, prevent people from walking away with our cash-worthy items unpaid for. Thus set up, the lone woman who arrived at 1PM was unable to pose a serious threat. And she bought $10-worth of stuff after lecturing us on why we should have had our sale yesterday. I felt improved by her admonishment and promptly went inside and asked Grace for absolution.

The rest of the Sale period went about as well. Each of the five people who stopped by (apart from a burly biker dude who bought the turkey fryer) made it a point to tell us about the mistake we'd made in having the sale today instead of yesterday. They were most sympathetic. I strangled the urge to say, "Yeah. OK. Thanks. Now buy my stuff or leave, Sistah Sassy."

Now it's time to go and haul stuff to the dump or bring it inside, depending upon the item.

*sigh*

Commerce. It's not for the meek.

Anybody need a piano?

~M

Copyright 2004 Seasmoke All rights reserved