Yard Sale Spectacular

Up at the crack of dawn to set out the treasure trove of merchandise and prepare the tables for the thundering herd that is to come is NOT for the faint of heart.

Signs were posted and pre-advertising was done on the local radio institution of "Swap-N-Shop" so that those faithful listeners would know where to come and spend the contents of their piggy bank.

That's right happy campers! It's YARD SALE SEASON!!!

Next to football, NASCAR and church, it's a religion in the South. Dedicated shoppers map out their day and go from sale to sale either purchasing needed items or enriching the haul for their OWN sale in a couple of weeks at bargain prices.

Then, there are those people who come just to browse and move on. Like the snob with their nose in the air over a bologna sandwich instead of caviar, I am left to wonder just what the heck they expected at a yard sale anyway??? The Crown Jewels?

I love the old women who dicker over every inconsequential tidbit they touch to see if they can jew you down on the price just enough to keep a closed fist over their carefully hoarded pennies. I'm going to be just like them when I get old.

I love the old men who are retired but 'tinker' on various mechanical things just to keep a sense of being useful alive and well. Some are war veterans of Korea and Vietnam who look somewhat lost as they follow their wives through the maze of merchanidise. It's as if they have landed on a forbidden and female planet that only one species truly understands.

The people who have children in tow are a brave sort. Children know a yard sale is like a big "YES" sign over the toys and stuffed animals that are in the waiting boxes and bins. NO one says "NO" to cheap toys, right?

Kids go home with toys just like the ones at home that sit abandoned and forgotten, but this is somehow different because it is a bargain.

The folks that chap my rear though are the ones that come convinced that you should GIVE AWAY your stuff to them because it's beneath their dignity to pay you for your goods.

Admittedly, the items in a yard sale are not first class. The whole point is to reuse, reduce and recycle by holding such a sale. When I go to a yard sale at someone else's place, I expect dings, scratches and imperfections which might even have a coating of dust from storage. Clothing items generally smell musty or mothball tinged and will require a complete cycle in the washer at least twice to remove the odor and make it wearable. But at least it was only 25 cents, right...?

I remember one time years ago, I was selling a bag of children's training pants. You know the kind, they never get worn out because eventually your kid DOES learn to go to the bathroom on the toilet.

I had this entire bag of about 40 pair of these undies for a couple of bucks. This lady came and tried to get the price altered in a most frustrating way. "You wouldn't take fifty cents for them, would you?"

ABSOLUTELY NOT!

I realize that dickering and haggling over prices is time honored, but give me a break! There were 40 pair of training pants and they were not stained or abused in any way!

Some things are firm prices, even at a yard sale.

She huffed and puffed and fumed about the price. When she finally stomped off sans training pants, there was an older lady who ran a day care in her home who quietly came up and said, "Did you say TWO dollars?"

When I nodded my assent, she replied, "I'll take them all! I run a day care and I'm always needing more training pants!"

I smiled and we made the transaction. She got the pants and I got two bucks from some pants that otherwise would have become just another donation to the Goodwill Industries.

One time a couple of years ago, I had two women almost come to blows over an embroidered shorty bathrobe I had which featured a colorful dragon on the back. Oriental was vere "IN" that year and I only had a couple of them.

Trust me when I tell you that NEITHER of these women could have worn the robe they were fighting over and even if they had put BOTH of the robes together, there would have been nothing left to the imagination. I'm not being unkind because I have a few thousand pounds to lose myself. But facts are facts. The robes were from my early married days when I was much lighter than I am now.

The saddest part of it all was that they actually knew each other and it looked like they were building to a good sulk that might last a while and for what? A bathrobe that didn't fit either of them.

Yard sales are funny in other ways.

Things that have no particular relevance to you seem to mean a great deal to strangers. Then again, the items that are the hot sellers vary wildy with each yard sale.

Today, cookbooks were the hot seller. If we had more, we could have sold them.

Dishes didn't move well and we chose not to do clothing since I haven't ever really done well on them. Furniture items didn't even budge and normally we have people lined up around the block for furniture.

Please tell me the next time you plan a yard sale because I'd like to come browse through the visible markers of your life on sale. I'll be less tired, spend a little money with you and more importantly, help the average American to survive the economic downturn.

Amended Rules of Dating for 2009

I have begun to realize that the rules of dating are much different as well as the expectation of the outcome from said dating than the ideals of my youth.

Sure, we had stupid people back them in the dark ages, too, but today, it seems that a vast number of people are dipping from the shallow end of the gene pool these days.

My sisters and I came up with what are, apparently, the new rules of dating, circa 2009.

1 - Car rolls up outside house and horn blasts a couple of times and strident voice yells "YO! 'sup?"

2 - Girl yells back "DAWG!" and runs out to car of perfect stranger who got her address from bathroom wall at truck stop.

3 - Dating arrangments: Drinks, dope, sex. But not necessarily in that order and the date never has any money.

4 - Pregnancy and denials of paternity.

5 - Recriminations and DNA test on "Jerry Springer" TV show while foul mouthed discussions of who is the bigger slut go on for a live audience.

6 - Broken car windows and malicious damage at home.

7 - Appearance on Judge Judy to recoup some money for compensation to pay for damages.

8 - MySpace and/or Facebook pages dedicated to trashing ex significant other and their posse.

9 - Police called in for numerous harrasment and/or stalking claims but refuse to arrest either party due to lack of sufficent evidence. TV show "Cheaters" is called in to investigate.

10 - Brief period of make up and play nice followed by unprotected sex and arrival of child #2 requiring new appearance on trashy TV show like "Steve Wilko" to have second paternity test performed to acertain paternity for child #2.

11 - Couple stays together with shabby Vegas wedding and groom joins Marine Corps to provide for family. Wife cheats and causes divorce.

12 - Girl dates trifling, low-life 'dudes' with no jobs and no prospect of either while former spouse is bounced from Marines for drug use. Did we mention the 'new dude' is ALSO a drug dealer...?

13 - Baby #3 in as many years arrives with more denials of paternity. With no prospect of completing high school education and no job on the horizon, girl takes off to Europe to 'find herself and find out what it's like somewhere else'.

14 - Girl returns from Europe with #4 in tow. No idea who the father is nor which country he is from.

15 - All boys in question continue propagation of the species with 'no clue the baby was mine' and run away to do it again with the next stupid girl.

Now that you know the rules that a great deal of society follows, you might want to know that there is a vast number of youth out there who think sex is a recreational activity that has no deeper significance than flossing your teeth. They don't see anything wrong with a variety of abberant behaviors and have been raised in such a permissive world that nothing is beyond the pale to them.

If this sounds funny to you, I'm truly sorry.

The fact is that we know too many who fit this list for it to make me laugh. And the saddest part is they are not making any effort to learn from their mistakes and poor choices because they honestly don't think they are making mistakes.

No wonder the world laughs as our nation self destructs in morality and decency.

They are happy to have our decadent people come spend our money with them, but they want to keep the lid on their own citizens to protect them from the abuse of agency that they see in us, the people who USED TO BE the freest nation in the world.

We are in bondage to appetite, desires and passions instead of being free under the rule of justice, decency and courage.

How long will this be permitted to continue...only God knows.

If My Life Were a Movie, Who'd Portray Me?

I have to ask myself just who is running this show sometimes. When the best laid plans of mice and men seem to change without warning, life gets exciting.

The best part of it is learning, like a sailor on the deck of a ship at sea, to roll with it all and just keep our eyes focused on the object of our design and keep moving forward.

I learned that particular lesson in a carnival fun house with a rotating floor. If you just focus on something at a distance and never look down, you can keep forging ahead despite the movement beneath your feet.

Life is like that all the time. The ground keeps shifting, but we have a choice, we can either shift WITH the movement and possibly go adrift... or we can step confidently and move to higher ground that isn't going anywhere at all.

Now comes the crucial question. Though I have some of the answers of life, they are not original answers. Heavenly Father provided them all and He shares those answers with everyone who will listen.

But I don't flatter myself that I am perfect. That is simply not true in my life.

So I ask myself, although my life is in reality just one Child of God trying to make my way back home, if somehow it was found worthy to be made into a movie - just whom would I choose to play my part?

I am thankful for my physical attributes, but herein must say, they haven't been 'altered' in the way Hollywood ascribes beauty with the surgeon's blade. The only plastic work I've ever had was as a result of an auto accident, so vanity wasn't the issue - closing up my wounds was.

Although there are high spots to be sure, I have rarely saved the nation from terrorists. I have, however, saved my household from an infestation of ants. I wonder how Hollywood would 'adjust' that truth? I'm sensing something requiring CGI and computer animation.

I have gone on adventures on land, water and through the air. But none of them used a jet pack, beaming technology or an invisible submarine. So again, I find that I am flummoxed by how a movie would show the excitement that my family finds in those things that would be considered mundane and ordinary.

So now, after reading the results of a friend's Facebook quiz on which Hollywood actress is most like her and seeing her amusement at the pronouncement, I realize that there are very few 'real' people in Hollywood who would be willing to take on the role of my life.

Sometimes, I don't want the role, either.

But at many, many other times, I feel so privileged to have my life just the way it is, that I don't want to pawn off any portion of it to another living soul. It has become a beautiful thing to me.

One silly quiz I took said I was a lot like Doris Day. I kind of like that because she never stooped to making trash. And I'm sure that the powers that be considered it. They are certain to have pushed for it. But she, to the best of my knowledge, only made movies that were cheerful, upbeat and positive.

I like that.

Even when life is hard, I like the thought that I can choose to be cheerful, upbeat and positive.

I realize the zenith of opportunity to create a movie of my life may never come. But that's just fine with me. I'd hate to think what an unkind screenwriter would make of the learning opportunities disguised as problems and mistakes. I haven't lived in a vacuum and looking backwards can sometimes be pretty messy.

So, if I had to choose and if my life were worth making into a movie, I'd like Doris Day to play my part. I think she would find the good despite the mistakes and make the movie into something warm, genuine and funny that the whole family could come and enjoy. There would be lots of songs, maybe a dance number or two and some sort of minor conflict that gets resolved before the main character kisses her handsome co-star and the closing credits roll.

Just sitting here this morning trying to decide how to start my day...