Yard Sale Pergatory

A month or so ago we received a neighborhood email asking if anyone was interested in participating in a neighborhood yard sale. I think I was the first to respond with a huge YES!
I forgot about it until the night before.  The ads had been placed, the flyers with our address had been distributed and we were now locked in, and we were  not going to be yard sale party poopers.
Last night we had a rare night out with friends.  While we should have been home pricing things and sorting things to sell we were picking our beer in a beer garden.  Lets just say between Don and I we had a generous garden bouquet.
When we arrived home, we briefly discussed what we would be placing in our yard and up until that very moment, Don had completely forgotten about this. Even the next morning he had no recollection because while he was "listening" to me ESPN was also on, so I'm sure I sounded more like Charlie Brown's teacher.
I stood up with every intention to start sorting but found my bed way too appealing,  and decided to go there rather than organize stuff nobody wants, including us.
I set my alarm to ring 5 hours from that moment.  It came too soon and before I knew it, I was up ransacking the house for things to sell.
If people had any question if we were going to have any more babies, their answer could be found in the yard daycare I had displayed.  A crib, saucer, high chair, toys that I randomly selected by thier level of annoyance. Ironically, most of the toys displayed came from my mother-in-law. She has a unique ability to find the most annoying toy in the Universe and give it to the boys, and go back to her home 1500 miles away.
In addition to doing this we had an 8 a.m. T-ball game, which as you can imagine was met with as much excitement as a person running a marathon after a bar crawl.  Actually, there was such lack of enthusiasm that I wondered if I was still buzzing because every kid appeared to be walking in their sleep.
I returned home to find Don sitting in a chair in the yard in the middle of a family history of child bearing.  Suddenly I didn't want to sell the crib. Don and I were giving the same people different prices.  I would say $50 he would say $30.  These people didn't need to bargain with us and by the time we finished arguing about the price they had moved on down the street.
I asked Don, how he could place a dollar value on the baby backpack that I fondly remember climbing a mountain with?  He asked if we were going to use it again, which is a cheap attempt to get me to state the obvious, which is (no).  Damn him!
 If my brain wasn't so foggy I would have had the ability to come up with something witty.
People that shop yard sales can be summed up in 3 categories. Hoarders, Weirdos and Nosy.  I had one lady ask about our dog crate and judging by her shirt, she already had too many dogs as it was.   People ask questions about the stuff like I have written the owners manual on it.  "About, how much is the maximum weight this can hold?" I don't f'ing know? Get in and we can find out.  The other thing I am not going to do is convince you to buy my stuff.  You either need it or you don't. More than likely you don't, but you will buy it anyway. Don on the other hand turns into a used car salesman. Demonstrating a folding chair. His motivation is to sell whatever he can so he doesn't have to carry it back into the house.  He was successful too. Later we discovered that his fly was unzipped so we weren't sure if that was the reason his sales numbers were so high, whatever, it worked.
The nosy yard sale goer just wants a sneak peek into your life and ask you questions. " So, you have kids?" No. We just like to pretend like we do. Not to mention the fact that 4 of them are now playing with the toys I selected and each have  friend over which makes me look like the little old lady who lived in a shoe.
I hate yard sales.
I thought my prayers had been answered when a van and a trailer pulled up filled with Amish folks.  They got out like the crew that services the Indy 500 race cars.  Within 2 minutes they had already searched the premises, test driven the stroller and high chairs, deemed all of our stuff unworthy and hopped back in the van and left.  They were gone before they even arrived and never said a word to me, despite my attempt to be friendly.
Just as they left, a huge truck arrived and I remembered that a sofa bed I had purchased a week ago was being delivered today.  That was something I hadn't even discussed with Don, but thought it would be a nice surprise. It wasn't.
Maybe I should have measured the stairway that would be a necessary path for the sofa bed to get to the desired location upstairs (which I did measure).
After a long 45 minutes and a delivery men who seemed to join TEAM DON in their distain for my lack of preparation, they were able to birth the sofa upstairs and only had to remove the legs to do so. The delivery guy actually appeared to be pouting and I wanted to remind him I know a thing or two about squeezing huge things through tight spaces and smack that pout right off of his face, but I got distracted by an old man looking at our blender. Why he was touching the START button I'm not sure, followed by the question, "Does this still work?"
I said, " yes, very well when it is plugged in, are you looking for a blender?"
"No".
Prime example of yard sale category "weirdo"
By this time Don was back but now giving me the silent treatment for failing to mention

a) that I bought a sofa bed and
b) I didn't tell him and
c) I didn't exactly measure properly

Thankfully it began to rain and we could put the remainder of our stuff we don't want back into our house, back into our house.
When it was all said and done we made enough money to cover our dinner of beer last night.
If a yard sale did anything it surrounded me in a purgatory of baby rearing memories along with the pain and with the addition of weird people who liked to run commentary on our belongings as if we can't hear them. "This looks really used". Well, duh. Its a plastic backpack from Dora that has traveled to Florida and back, Mexico and not to mention its assembly in China, or the dozen times it has been dropped down the stairs and possibly defected in for all I know. So yes, it looks used, that is why it is $1 and not retail value of $9.99.

The one thing we agreed on when it was all said and done was that we will never be doing a yard sale again. One afternoon was long enough in the yard sale purgatory.