We are home for Easter weekend, which also falls on George’s birthday this year. We’re usually at MATS for his birthday, but they’ve moved it out a week this time, so the Freightliner Run Smart folks will have to miss their chance to loudly sing “Happy Birthday” to him on the show room floor. This is unfortunate, because it’s one of the few times I get to see George go to Def-Con 11 in the “embarrassed red face” portion of his life. Joey the Juice and Henry Albert can sing really loud, and they get louder as George gets redder. It’s a treat we’ll have to reserve for next year, and hope his birthday coincides with the show again.
Who doesn’t need a fuzzy purple jacket?This is likely the last long weekend we’ll be home for most of spring and summer — we have a weekly show or a family engagement for about the next three months, so we’ve decided to have our garage sale this weekend. Okay, I decided to have our garage sale this weekend, George is an unfortunate bystander who got swept up in my madness. Again.
I was clearly not prepared to leave a 2400 sq ft home for a 1080 ft home. All my talk about not needing so much stuff was complete BS – I ended up bringing 1080 ft worth of stuff to pack inside the house, and kept the rest of it to cram in the garage. Just in case. You never know when you’ll need an oak dining table, or a purple fake fur jacket, or a box of margarita mix from 1999. (I’d be happy as hell to mix a 1999 margarita if there were a zombie apocalypse, and the liquor store shut down. You would, too. Don’t lie.)
Problem is, we need the garage. One of the big plus points the new house has is a large, two car garage – with electric garage door openers. (I’ve never lived in a house with electric garage door openers – you can just call me Fancy. We’ve had a barn, with a giant metal sliding door that freezes either open or closed by November, and doesn’t move again until late April, but no electric garage doors.) We’ve yet to be able to use the fancy garage because it’s full of stuff that doesn’t belong in a garage.
Even though we gave away two full rooms of furniture before we moved, we still have enough left to have a decent garage sale. The hard part is the second cull – really letting go of everything I should have let go of before we moved. Did you know it’s possible to carry a box of broken electronics around for 13 years, and never open it? It’s like a time capsule full of things a 6-year-old boy destroyed, and you had hopes for getting fixed one day. Back when we had hopes and dreams… Ha ha, I’m kidding – we still have hopes and dreams, they’re just waaaaay different than they were 13 years ago.
So, I’m being brutal on myself, just putting a price on everything and telling myself if it sells, it wasn’t meant to stay with me for my “just in case” pile of stuff. This is a Jedi mind trick, because I’ve already arranged to donate whatever doesn’t sell to a local charity, but don’t mention that to me while I’m culling and pricing our cumulative treasures from the past 20 years. I’m allowing myself one big plastic tub and two book boxes for the zombie apocalypse. Also, as many tubs and boxes as it takes to house our ever-growing Christmas decoration collection. And I’m keeping the crossbow targets, for sure. Of course, there are also the things we’ll want to leave the kids when we exit this mortal coil – their baby blankets, hundreds and thousands of photographs, pottery their grandfather made…
Clearly, this is an effort I need more than two days to complete, but time ain’t on my side right now and if we’re gonna do it, we gotta get it done. Out with the old, and back to the road.
