Monday, August 18, 2008
My Parent's Garage Sale
Earlier this summer I headed to Halifax to visit my parents and spend a day sorting/tagging/pricing stuff that I'd had in storage at their place that was meant to go for garage sale. My folks had spent about an hour and a half a day over the last month and a half going through their stuff and sorting/taggin/pricing garage sale items.
This weekend, I took Friday off and headed back to help out with the garage sale. (My folks aren't in the best of health so they are really limited in the amount of lifting they can do.) I got there around 4 PM on Friday and it wasn't long before I'd started bring boxes up from the basement and putting them in the garage in preparation for the next morning. I filled the garage (well, the half of it that was available to fill) and still had a room of boxes as well as some furniture and old exercise equipment that needed to come up. We kept an eye on the weather forecast and it was showing 70% chance of rain so we decided to postpone until Sunday morning. So, I figured I could catch up on a bit of rest and perhaps do a bit of shopping on Saturday, and I offered to make dinner for my folks. (You guessed it - the new pizza recipe!) Mom's friend Shelly was going to come by and help and bring her 14-year-old son Kyle along, so mom called her and said they should stop by Saturday morning anyway and we'd do a big breakfast.
7:45 Saturday morning, Shelly and Kyle pull in to our street and they are followed by a ton of cars looking for the garage sale. Turns out that the weather forecast had changed overnight and now it wasn't supposed to rain until later that day. So it was a mad rush to put everything out. People were buying things before we'd even got them out of boxes. We ran a row of tables down the middle of the driveway and put all the glassware and fragiele stuff on them. there were boxes of stuff under the tables, and then we laid blankets out on the lawn on either side of the driveway and filled those with items. There was a LOT of stuff. Not a huge surprise since it had been absolute years since their last garage sale. At one point mid-morning, it started to rain, so we pulled out the plasticv tarps and covered some stuff while people shopped through the rain. Thankfully the rain didn't last too long, so we were able to uncover things and keep selling.
Then it was noon. And the rain came back. Hard. We covered everything with tarps. The shoppers dissappeared, and dad decided that we should get at least something to eat, so he and mom set to work preparing "brunch". I kept an eye on things and then went in to eat. But I had a nagging feeling at the back of my head, so as soon as I'd wolfed my food down, I went back out to check on things. Turns out, the rain was coming down so hard, all of the items on the right side of the driveway were somewhat submerged in about 5.5 inches of water. And any box that remained outside and on the ground - even on the driveway under the tarps, had gotten soaked. Thus began our mad rush to rescue as much of the stuff as possible, and then to find dry-ish boxes to transfer things to so that they could at least be carried and stacked back int he garage. It took us until after 3 PM to finish tidying up. Thank goodness for Kyle helping me carry any of the especially heavy stuff and anything that required two people!
Then - I got groceries (and a much-needed Lactose-free Tazo Chai Latte from Starbucks) and headed back to make supper (the pizza). After supper, i felt like I was still on autopilot with things that needed taken care of, so I started some laundry and then headed out to visit my friends Sue and Jed for a bit. Their son is really growing up and is cute as a button, and they have an adorable new kitten that was fun to play with.
I tried to sleep in on Sunday, but I'm really not great at changing my sleeping schedule, so I was up somewhat early. I finished the laundry I'd started the night before, made breakfast (an omlette for dad and french toast for me - mom doesn't eat eggs so she had toast) and then started packing my stuff up and loading my car for the trip home. I left at about noon and drove straight back - couldn't wait to get home and see my cats! (A HUGE thanks again to Jay & Lisa M for taking care of them while I was away!!) I got back at around 4 and unpacked the car and called a few folks and made supper and finally started to try to unwind. I watched some TV (What Not to Wear)and there was a part of me that just couldn't stop. I was overtired and restless. So I pulled out all of my books (both hardcover adn softcover, minus the extra-tall hadcover ones, which are in a different spot) and I started organizing them alphabetically by author. I kept all of the plays and theatre books in a different section, but now the remainder of my books are all organized. THEN I hit the hay.
And I am now feeling all of the muscles I used over the weekend, and I already can't wait to catch up on my sleep. And I am anxiously awaiting auditions for Chicago coming up at the end of the week.
Posted by Dre at 8:02 AM
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