Farce sale

Two weeks ago, when Sunny left her job and we started working on the house, we realized just how much work we had to do to get ready for the move… so we had to change our plans regarding selling our stuff.

The original plan was to have a yard sale last weekend, and take whatever we didn’t manage to sell to the local flea-market this weekend.

Instead, realizing we’d never get everything packed up and ready in time, we decided to push back the yard sale until today, and forgo the flea-market all together, deciding instead to just hold a two-day yard sale if needed.

Did I mention we fly this coming Wednesday? It was make or break time.

Well, a few days ago we saw the weather forecast and it wasn’t too bad. Today was supposed to be cloudy with a ten percent chance of rain, and tomorrow was a sixty percent chance of rain, but it was supposed to be scattered showers.

Things did not go according to plan.

First of all, for some ungodly reason, Sunny decided to advertise the yard sale as starting at 8am. This is way too early, at least for me… but especially when you consider the fact that we were up working on getting everything boxed up until 2.30am. Given that I actually got to sleep at about five this morning, getting out of bed at seven wasn’t the most pleasant thing I’ve ever done.

It was even more unpleasant when I opened the front door at 7am and saw that it was absolutely pissing it down.

At first we thought we had it handled. My step daughter and her boyfriend were coming over to help out, and knowing there was a possibility of rain, they brought two large screen rooms…basically large 8x8 tents with screen mesh walls that an adult can easily stand up in.

So we set it up so the smaller things were in the screen rooms set up in front of the house and we took pictures of the large pieces of furniture so we didn’t have to bring them outside in the rain. The idea was that we could show the pictures and if anyone was interested we could bring them into the actual house to show the items.

Great, right?

Well, we quickly discovered that while the screen rooms are great for providing shade on a hot day, they weren’t quite as good at keeping the rain off. They just weren’t waterproof. Everything was quickly getting soaked to the point where we had to cover everything with trash bags to stop everything from getting soaked.

Given the weather I was amazed when the first person showed up.

He had a quick skim through the things we had out and asked about furniture. I pulled out the pictures and he looked at me like I’d just grown an extra head. It became apparent quickly that he thought we were running some sort of scam.

Of course I explained that if he saw anything he was interested in, I’d take him straight in the house, show him the actual item and help him load it on his truck right then and there. Somehow this still didn’t convince him and he left in a huff.

Basically, we spent five hours standing in the rain watching everything get soaked and by the time it was over, we’d had the grand total of five customers, only two of which bought anything, and we made the grand total of sixty-five dollars.

The best part is that one of the items sold was Sunny’s China Hutch, and because the people who bought it couldn’t fit it into their car, after two hours sleep, we can’t even take a nap because we have to wait for them to come pick it up.

Oh…and our house it at the bottom of a hill down a dirt road at the back of the property…a dirt road that turns into mud and gets slick as hell when it rains heavily.

Whatever vehicle they arrive in the pick up the hutch…I hope it’s four wheel drive.

One last thing: Checking the forecast today, tomorrow we’re meant to get between four and six inches of rain. Our two day yard sale? Yeah…not happening.