Garage Sale Day: Debrief

Saturday was the most wonderful day of the year.  Besides Christmas.  And Thanksgiving.  And each day I get to buy new shoes.

It was GARAGE SALE DAY!!!

Again, this was the World's.  Largest.  Garage.  Sale.

As in, it don't get much bigger than this.

As in, you'll find all the junk your heart desires.

As in, bring your walking shoes, wallet, granny cart and patience.

...

Friday night I stayed at my parents' house; we planned to leave for the sale early the next morning.  Kimberlie and I blew up the air mattress, settled in with our favorite sleepy-time movie, The Mummy, and fell asleep.

But not before her darling puppy peed all over the kitchen floor sending Kimberlie downstairs to the laundry room for "dog towels" (which are just crappy towels they no longer use) to find the basement flooding.  So while she cleaned and disinfected the kitchen, my mom and I rotated from the wet ground to the washing machine's spin cycle the rest of the dog towels until we cleaned everything up.

I then went to sleep and woke up at 6am.

But not before I had to leave the air mattress because I am now too old to sleep a mere 5 inches from the cold hard ground to sleep on the couch, waking Kimberlie's dog every 15 minutes to stop her from snoring.

It was a great start.

But nothing was going to stand in my way of junk shopping my little heart out.  Not lack of sleep, not cold, harsh winds, not even Mother Nature's poorly timed surprise.

And with that resolve, we headed out.

However, some of us were a little less resolved than others.  Some of us are also not morning....creatures.

This is the gang before commencing, minus my dad who is taking the picture.  Kimberlie is on the right and my mom is in the middle.  Notice: the dog is wearing a pink hoodie.  And, yes.  She is matching my sister.

See my granny cart?  You'll see in a second just how useful the sucker was.  What you won't see are the hundreds of other granny carts, carted by non-grannies.  I can't properly express the feeling I had pulling it behind me, a feeling of camaraderie between me and my fellow Warrensburg Garage Salers as we braced ourselves for a full day of wading through treasures, watching novices, counseling them in the ways of weight distribution.  It was evident, by that cart, I knew what I was doing. 

And then I knocked over four people on my way to get dried Chinese lanterns.

We start so early in the morning because by noon the town looks like this.  Tens of thousands of people, literally, pack into what is really a small stretch of Warrensburg.  It gets annoying.  Especially when one of those ten thousand buys the glass pitcher and bowl I knew would look so perfect on my antique dresser. 

The food is a great part of this who shebang.  It's the same fried crap you get at county fairs and at a time of the year when you and your lower GI are just starting to miss it.  We got chicken quesadillas here.  At 10am.  Donuts came next.  Then sausage and peppers.

Eventually, we did need rest breaks. 

And we took them wherever there was enough space to park our tooshes.  See my cart?  It's full of goodies, jackets, water bottles, an empty tin can, hopes, and dreams.  See the lady petting the dog?  This happened all. stinkin'. day.

Hehe.  I am in so much trouble for posting this.  I consider it payback for her little monster keeping me up all night and literally trying to eat my hair.  But because I am afraid of my youngest sister, I am not going to tell her I "featured" her here.  Let's just keep this between you and me.

There is an equally hilarious picture of me floating around out there, but I conveniently can't find it.

...

So after 7.5 hours of walking up and down the main street in the small town of Warrensburg, stopping at almost every stand, completely filling up my cart, this is what I ended up with:

An old tobacco tin, a horse hankie, five green buttons, one antique button and a gold flowery thing. 

You probably had the same reaction as I did:

That's it?!

...

See you next year best garage sale ever.