"We buy and sell junk!"

I just committed to being a stop on the Cohagen Community Garage Sale, to be held in May, and the more I think about it, the funnier it is! I am ALL about garage sales...some of my best junk has come from garage sales. And community garage sales seem more efficient, make sense and have a sort of party feel to them. Like everybody got together on the same day for coffee and a clothes and Tupperware swap. Nice!

The funny part is, that unlike block-type garage sales, our garages are something like 15 miles apart from each other! So the Tour de Stuff will encompass about 60 miles, round trip. AND, get this: our customers will have to drive a minimum of 23 miles to get to the first stop! You have to really want to get some $.25 paperbacks and score big on gently used clothing!

The other funny thing, to me, is how the idea of garage sales brings out the entrepreneur in me. The minute I signed on, I started looking around my kitchen, trying to evaluate how attached I really am to that pot that is right at this minute full of macaroni, or trying to remember what sorts of sale-able things I have stored under the house. Could I make things to sell? Yeah! That's it! I'll make garden art and when people walk around looking at the yard, as they WILL do, they may buy some! And I can sell the kittens! Or throw them in bags, when the customers aren't looking. By the time they find them, they'll be so far in the tour that they won't have gas enough to turn back and return them....AND if they just leave them at the next garage, we all win.

THEN my mind goes to the yard, and my heart sinks. Do you realize how much work I have to do between now and then to make the place worthy to set up 3 card tables and a clothes rack? Maybe we can get the pergola done, get all the pots full of blooming annuals, have complimentary lemonade and ice tea with brownies on the deck...first, we have to stain the deck.... Can you rent mature trees for the weekend?

And we don't get much company here, so by the time all is said and done, I'll be thanking them as they try to get in their cars with my junk, the whites of their eyes rolling, stuffing dollar bills through the crack in the window...just so they can get away from that crazy farm wife and her kids. Only 8 more miles until the next sale stop!

Can't you see it?

Sadly, by the time the Tour de Stuff gets here, I will have probably only managed to price about 1 card table's worth of stuff, the deck will be unstained (except for the perpetual red Koolaid stains), nothing will be blooming, the customers will be politely looking at the kid's toys scattered around the yard and trying to figure out how to get out of eating the brownies offered by grubby little hands that cause the Koolaid stains on the deck. We will probably have to brand calves that day, so we will all be frazzled and I'll end up paying everyone $3.00/car to go to my mother-in-law's for some truly classy items, in a sanitary environment, where the tulips are in bloom.

And there you have it. Third Friday and Saturday in May. We buy and sell junk.