Garage Sale

Why grab possessions like thieves, or divide them like socialists when you can ignore them like wise men?
-- Natalie Clifford Barney

Sunday, May 23, 1999
One year ago: The Opposite of Sex
Two years ago: A Delicate Exotic Fruit

I woke up relatively early Saturday morning so I could get over to Jack's house expeditiously. I'd decided on this plan when I learned that he was doing the yard sale thing again this weekend, and he didn't have anyone to help him.

So after I arrived we brought out stuff from the shed and inside, and arranged it attractively, and put signs up around the neighborhood. Since I was there to mind the store, Jack could take care of some of the other packing that he needed to do. It was a beautiful day; maybe that's why we didn't get as much traffic as we would have liked. Late in the afternoon we washed Jack's motorcycle, which has been sitting in the back shed over the winter.

We -- that is, Jack -- grilled some frozen chicken breasts for dinner, then we packed the computer books in Jack's office (why are those books much heavier than fiction hardbacks or paperbacks?), then sacked out pretty early. It's tiring, hauling all this assorted crap around. It would have been more efficient to just call for a bulk pickup from a charitable organization, I know, but Jack just wasn't comfortable with doing that, without making an effort to sell stuff first.

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We decided to give the yard sale one more day, so while I read under the shade of the car port, Jack got his van running, which hasn't run in the time I've known him, and did more sorting and packing in his office. We cut prices drastically after lunch, to no avail, since the finest weekend so far this year meant folks weren't out looking for stuff to buy. In the end we put the stuff Jack wants to keep in the shed (I hope it doesn't rain again -- that roof leaks!) and piled the rest, including many computer hardware dinosaurs, in the corner of the carport, out of the downstairs tenant's way. If someone comes along and steals any of it before the charity pickup, they are welcome to it! It means they must have a use for it.

We took the books to Half Price Books, then went to dinner on the proceeds.

I was able to remain calm the whole time this weekend -- no tears about Jack moving. He kept up his spirits pretty well also, under a ton of stress about his daughter, the move, his back hurting, the job. He only got cranky once when I was questioning the wisdom of keeping some item that he'd already been trying to sell, when it came down to getting rid of it some other way. I'm really trying to not give advice or input about all that; this move is his to decide about. But my tongue and eyebrows got the better of me for a minute.