Well, we did survive the yard sale, but it’s taken us this long to recover!
I’m sure everyone else knows this already, but people showed up over an hour before we had advertised the sale to start while we were just beginning to set up. I couldn’t believe it. And someone else I’d never met picked up an item and scoffed at it saying, “Do you really want $5 for this?”, with this look on her face that seemed to say, why are you even alive? When I asked her if she wanted to offer less, she set it down with such a wave of disgust that I almost fell down. I mean, for all she knew, my great, great, great grandmother made it! It wasn’t like we refused to haggle with people. Someone should write a book about Yard Sale Etiquette!

Harry and I would have been totally hopeless without the help of his parents, Ed and Harriet. Their help pricing, sorting, arranging, haggling and tearing down was invaluable!! We are also very thankful for the people who donated their stuff to sell–so much stuff that we are going to have to have another sale!
We sold about 25% of the stuff we had to sell and made about $350, which we were very excited about! The only part we’re not excited about is the second yard sale we will be obligated to have with the other 75%. Oh well, it has to be easier once everything is sorted and priced, right???

Harry and I are having a yard sale tomorrow to raise money for our mission trip to Greece in June. Wow. I am in awe of the people who do this often–the yard sale thing. I think this is my second yard sale ever–the first being the one with my parents when I was like 6 years old. It’s so much work! I had to climb over the couches and piles and piles of clothes and kitchen gear last night to turn the radio on and off. And then, Harry had to catch me as I catapulted off of the couches back to a safe place on the floor.

And I still probably have no idea what is ahead of me. I’ve made signs that Harry has secured in the ground, posted on Craig’s list, gathered items from five different families, made posters for pricing and we’ve sorted. Boy, have we sorted. But the pricing–the thing that scares me the most–we’ve saved for tonight! Ah!

But I am clinging to the promise: if you price it, they will come! That’s a promise, right?

It’s really sad. The coffee shop where Harry and I first started talking went out of business this week! I don’t know if you’d call it a date exactly, but it was the place where our friendship first started to become confusing!

I don’t like coffee at all, but Harry probably couldn’t live without it and this was some of his favorite (because of the dark taste AND because it wasn’t Starbucks). But it’s not really about the coffee, you know? It’s about a place that meant something to both of us that just all of a sudden doesn’t exist anymore, a great gift idea for my husband gone, a fun, inexpensive date vanished. A landmark in one of our favorite memories now lives on only as we choose to remember it. We may even forget how it looked one day; although I hope we’ll never forget how it felt to be there…