Garage sale!

So, today was the day of the Irvington Garage Sale -- the one that I've been prepping for for, oh, about a month now; decluttering the house, piling useless old stuff into banker's boxes all over the dining room, living room and bedroom. Finally I could get it out into the open and SELL it. Yay!

(We also cleaned out the garage, including three boxes of old beer bottles that Drew had collected from the 1990s. He has dragged it to every residence we've lived in together, and he finally assented to me emptying the boxes and throwing out the bottles. Now if I could just get him to clean up his work space downstairs....)

The forecast was for rain, but we got a good five hours in before it really started pouring and I had to tote things back up to the garage. Rachel was fantastically helpful setting things up in the morning; she kept carrying stuff down from the garage to the street completely voluntarily. (I had to get two tires patched and rotated first thing, so I didn't get to start selling until 10 or so). We got rid of an old bike and one of Rachel's strollers and some other things -- and I snagged a camp chair for $2 down the street and a storage bin system for Rachel's room for $30. We still managed to clear a nice chunk of change, and I met some really nice people. All in all, a good day.

Then it was off to our friend Sarah's house. Her son Noah was with his dad, but he and Rachel talked by iPhone. And oh, did they talk!! "I want Rachel back!" Noah kept saying. He taught her her first knock-knock joke and they had a fine time talking for about 20 minutes. He'll be at her birthday party next weekend, one lone boy among a passel of giggling girls. He's a nice kid, though; I'm sure he'll be able to handle the attention.

Sarah, her boyfriend Mike, Drew and I sat around talking long into the evening while Rachel amused herself in Noah's upstairs bedroom, finding toys to play with and things to color (and when I finally came to get her, there were ink smudges up and down her arms). She really didn't want to go and pouted a bit, but was asleep by the time the 10-minute car ride was over.

Cute Rachel sayings:

"Mommy, I'm not afraid of ANYTHING," Rachel said at breakfast this morning. "Ask me!"
"Are you afraid of monsters?" I asked.
"Noo," she said.
"How about dogs? You used to be afraid of dogs," I said.
"Only when they bark," she said. "They hurt my ears, and that's why I'm afraid of them."

***

One garage sale customer decided to tease Rachel a bit and offered her 5 cents for her little chair (she had dragged it outside to sit in, but ended up drawing chalk pictures on the sidewalk. It was so cute!!)
"No," she laughed.
"10 cents," he offered.
"Nooo!"
"Five dollars!" he said.
"NOOO!" she answered. "You have no choice!"

***

Last night as we were reminding Rachel about the garage sale, she suddenly shouted, "Come to our garage sale and buy some stuff!" and then she turned to us and asked, "Do you have a microphone??"