Monday Rambles

I'm having a problem of skeleton indecency at my booth.

Really?

Anyone know what I can do about it?  I guess this is to be expected when you're working with folks who walk around with everything hanging out like they do.  Or at least it would be hanging out if it were still there.  Or something.

Also, there may be a headless goose wandering around this Halloween.

Beware!

I guess it's about time for the Country Crafts Zombie Apocalypse to happen.  FLEE!

Walnuts are falling in our back yard, so I guess that means it's fall.  Thing is, we've been in this house for 15 years now, and I never noticed that we had a walnut tree before.  In fact, I would almost swear that we never, ever had walnuts before!  Is this normal?

Another thing I love about this time of year is going through the stores and looking at all the seasonal merchandise--Halloween right now and the bits of Christmas that are trickling in.  Seeing all this fills me with happy thoughts about scooping some of that crap up when it's 75% off  for the booth next year.  Yes, I stalk the holiday merchandise!  Essentially, I case the joint, shamelessly.

So, I had a yard sale on Saturday.  I brought some stuff home from the booth (mainly that damn glass), grabbed my tables off Sorrow Mountain, and four boxes of books off the Hillock, then set to work in the shed--aka Sorrow Mountain, the Backyard Edition.

Except for those banana boxes and a couple of large items, this is all household stuff that we don't use/need/want.  I dug through about a third of it and ended up with enough for a yard sale.  Along the way I found the last of my mother's stuff.  (I have said this about four times now.)  It was all her kitchen/household/tools and such that we don't need because we have all of them already.  It went into the sale, and all of it sold!

Speaking of the banana boxes, when we loaded them in after Dixie closed, there were 50 of them.  Last week, it was down to 24.  I'm planning on taking 10 of them next week, which will have me down to 14.  I think by the end of the year, all those babies will be gone!  Woo hoo!

I also found about six boxes of old papers that need to be sorted and probably recycled.  That's this week's project.  Since I have treatment tomorrow, I want something I can work on while I sit down, and this will fit the bill nicely.

I also ended up making a couple of boxes of booth bound stuff from the shed, so pricing that is on this week's agenda as well.  

Keith came up with the bright idea of setting up a tent in the back yard, so I could just put stuff in it when I got it ready for the sale. That way I didn't have to re-clutter the shed and I could set up on Saturday without even having to open the shed.  It worked wonderfully.

Peeking in through the opening

Come Saturday, way too early in the morning, I threw it all on the sidewalk in back of the house, people came and bought it, they gave me money, and I got rid of it.  The end.

Crappy cell phone pic alert!

I was in serious "Get this shit out of here mode" so stuff was way cheap.  And it sold. And it sold.  And it sold. And it sold.

In the end, almost everything sold, except for the books, which were hardly touched.  They are probably off to Half Price Book this week.  I pulled a small stack for the booth, but I already have a bunch waiting to go in the booth, so I don't want to keep too many.  I have a couple of vintage leather jackets that didn't sell, so they're going to the second hand place down the street this week.  Purge, baby, purge!

The damn glass that was left went to the curb with a "Free" sign after the sale.  It was gone by Sunday morning.  That was my offering to the junk gods for success at next month's junk set out.  Ritual is important, you know.  All in all, I was a happy, if tired, camper Saturday evening.  I think I ran that steroid completely out!

As always, the fun part is the people.  There was the book scanner who showed up over an hour before opening time.  I ran him off, politely of course.  I didn't even have the books out and I was not about to let him dig through the boxes.  Scanners around here are pretty notorious for bad behavior and leaving messes.  I have no patience for that.  It occurs to me that I may have jinxed my book sales somehow by doing that, but I would do it again regardless.  Scanners never buy more than two or three books anyway.

Then there was the scrapper who pulled up in a truck full of junk--bed frames and the lot--and said:  "You selling that stuff or giving it away?"  I'm not kidding!  I said: "It's a yard sale."  He grunted (really!) at me and drove off.  I didn't even have any scrappable stuff.  Why me?  Sometimes, I feel like I must not be living right.

A younger, hippie type dude came up late in the afternoon and asked:  "Do you have any books on, like, shamanism and stuff?"  I was kind of tickled to tell him that I did!  And he bought them!  Pays to be a weirdo I guess.

After he paid, he saw the tent in the yard and got all excited.  "Dude!  I feel you!  I camp out in my back yard all the time.  I got my tent fixed up all cool inside."  I didn't have the heart to tell him that it was only up to hold yard sale stuff.

Then there was the construction worker who bought the daintiest glass stuff I had.  "I just love knick knacks."  And the mother/daughter duo who bought a ton of stuff. made everybody smile because they were so nice, gave me more money than I was asking for because they thought everything was too cheap, and rearranged my tables as they went to make things prettier so I would sell more.  I tried to get them to stay.

Overall, it was a lot of fun.  It sent much better than it had a right to, considering I half-assed the entire thing.  I had decided I wanted to do a sale, then kept losing enthusiasm bit by bit as it got closer.  You can see in the pics that I didn't even sweep the damn sidewalk. Half-assed, I tell you!  Hell, I didn't even put the Craigslist ad up until the morning of the sale.

Look what I found:

It's old, heavy as hell, and it needs a decent top and a new back panel, but I think some project minded person is going to love it.  It's the epitome of something with "great bones."  All the file drawer hardware is still inside.  I saw it on the curb from the bus on Tuesday, but obviously couldn't get to it then. It was still there on Wednesday, when we were headed to my scan.  Incredibly, it was still there Wednesday evening, so I nabbed it.

I get my scan results on Tuesday, so I'll let you know.  I'm going to tell the docs I'm tired of getting scanned and ask to be faxed next time.  Just to mix things up a bit.  Keith has to go out of town for a family thing that just came up, so me and Chiquito are solo for a few days.  I can't go because of my treatment.

Booth sales were crazy wild over the weekend!  I did super well selling nothing but smalls.  That makes for a long-ass email report, let me tell you!  In fact, I haven't moved a stick of furniture in a couple of weeks.  This is such a crazy business.  Earlier in the week, I had spent three days working the booth, so, of course, for those three days my sales were off quite bit.  That always seems to happen, for some reason.  My daily average was starting to lag a bit much for my taste, so the weekend upswing was welcome news.  I'll probably have a lot to tidy up today.

The Halloween stuff is really on fire now.  A lot has sold, but there's still plenty left to sell.  I'm going to have to remember to get it out earlier in the future.  The fall stuff seems to have stalled and it just sitting there.  I'm going to try to spruce it up today.

Speaking of today, I'd better get moving.