It’s over!
Well, not really, we still have a lot of unsold goods and not-so-goods to pack up, but the doors to sell hell are closed.
It was hot. If you ever wanted to r-e-a-l-l-y get to know your family, (and I can’t imagine why you would want to - trust me) spend several days in a double-car oven, working at a garage sale with them, while all manner of humanity wanders by, pawing through tools and treasures.
The tools sold well. The treasures…not so much. There isn’t a lot of demand for fur coats in June. And everyone seemed to be able to live without a Rockwell collector plate.
The massive depression glass collection displayed in my previous post has been trimmed a bit, but as groovy so succinctly noted, few people are interested in one more thing to have to dust. I see an eBay store in grandma’s future.
The Campbell’s Soup cups and glassware that Peter noticed in the photos, didn’t draw any takers. Perhaps we should have included actual soup.
On the last day of the sale, I dragged myself out of bed at 4 AM and sat on the toilet, rubbing my eyes and face. I felt severe stubble around my eyebrows, and realized I hadn’t plucked in days. I pulled open the makeup drawer and got out my trusty tweezers and magnifying mirror. Raising the mirror to eye level, I attempted to focus my bleary vision. In the mirrored reflection I saw not only my eyebrow stubble, but something slithering.
I spun around (not easy to do when you’re sitting on a toilet) and saw a small snake retreating behind the faucet. Apparently the lack of human activity in the house and the excessive outdoor temperature had driven the little bugger indoors. I can speak rationally about this now, but when I first spotted it, all I did was scream.
A screaming woman trying to exit the bathroom with her panties around her ankles, after flinging tweezers at a snake at four o’clock in the morning is a sight to behold, I was later told by my amused husband.
The snake was equally terrified.
Husband (my hero!) threw a towel over the terrified snake, carried it outside and released it. Since we live out in the country, this has happened a couple of other times in the 20-odd years we’ve lived here, but I will never get used to it.
But it made leaving to go haul two tons of stuff out onto a driveway, a whole lot easier.
Posted by Marti @ 
How opportune that you posted today Marti…. on the very day that your wonderful book arrived in the mail, I’ve only read the first 3 chapters but have laughed at them all, (sorry, even your broken ankles was funny to read about.)
Glad you got rid of that snake by the way.
June 18th, 2007 at 10:35 am
Oh I am so glad you got it OK, Peter! I hope you’ll get a lot of laughs from it!
June 18th, 2007 at 12:22 pm
Oh, uh, geez. No, snake would have been the end of me… I probably would have taken a dive into the bathtub ala Danny Glover and Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon.
Good grief.
Glad the sale is over at least. Too bad your about to be in charge of Grandma’s ebay store.
June 18th, 2007 at 12:50 pm
LOL, my wife would’ve made a straight line for the nearest shotgun and blown that bathroom to smithereens! She would never consider sitting down again in a bathroom that had had a snake in it! Hence, no hesitation about total destruction — I would have to totally remodel the throne room, regardless.
Very funny stuff, per usual.
June 18th, 2007 at 3:07 pm
OMG! I would have peed my pants! Guess you were in the best place for that…
:)
Mystery
www.shotinthedarkmysteries.com
June 18th, 2007 at 6:18 pm
okay…. deep breath… whooooo heeeeeee whoooo heeee… I’m hyperventalating
June 19th, 2007 at 12:11 am
Holy crap, that would have terrified me, too! I don’t care if it was the size of a worm! I think the rest of my morning routine would have been performed standing on the sink.
June 19th, 2007 at 10:14 am
ewwwwwwwwwwwww
June 19th, 2007 at 2:38 pm
I couldn’t have gone with a snake watching me. I can hardly go if I think someone can hear me.
June 20th, 2007 at 2:58 pm
Sounds like the mama-wolf-spider-fiasco of ‘89. The moral of that tale was “Never squash a mama wolf spider with an egg sac when you are incapacitated on the john.”
Do you have ANY idea how many baby spiders were waiting in that egg sac?
Me either (even though I tried to look it up), but I’d estimate about 7,000,000.
Can anyone say,”RAID!!!!”
June 21st, 2007 at 6:11 pm
I don’t like snakes OUTSIDE– so finding one inside the house would have crazed me too!
June 25th, 2007 at 11:13 am