Garage Sales and Change

The day dawned bright.... and hot, just like every day in July and August in Oklahoma. We were up early on this Saturday morning ready to tackle "the project of the day". My youngest had gotten up around 4 a.m.. I was awakened by a tug on my arm and his little voice saying "Wait sup Momma, gots wup and put yoor makes-up on.... Fizzed me Bwreakfwast." Yep, even at his young age he knew Momma didn't have many rules that were set in stone, but waiting till Momma gots her "makes-up" on before expecting bwreakfwast was one on the very short list. I've heard of early birds before but before having children I never dreamed that there were people who actually got up at this godforsaken time on Saturday morning. A box of cereal and some cartoons put him off a couple of hours while I slept with one eye open. Once my feet hit the floor, it was "no holds barred". Our weekly contest of "let's see how much we can cram into one weekend" was the very effective way we lived our lives. My husband and I work as a team, we work fast (or used to), and we work well together... We always have and hopefully always will. Today we were going to tackle the garage. Our garage had seldom, if ever, seen a car. Although I wasn't blessed with OCD (I wish I had just a small case of it), I did try to keep the house uncluttered which meant if I couldn't find a place for something I would open the garage door and kinda throw it in with the clear intention of doing something with that or finding a place for that at some point in my life. This weekend was going to be that point, not necessarily out of great desire, but because I couldn't get the garage door opened much less toss something in without risking an avalanche of ginormous magnitude. Yes, today we would clean the garage. I got my makes-up on so we (as a unit) were now ready to get the show on the road. There were a lot of people in town as this was the "World's Largest Garage Sale" weekend. It was a very successful stab at drawing people into our town to generate some cash following the crash of the 1970's oil boom. Ignoring the slew of cars and people going up and down our street, we headed to the side of the house to the garage and rolled the door open. There it stood, a mountain of misplaced tools, junk and stuff just waiting to be thrown away or put away. We began dragging stuff out, dusting it off and tossing or putting it away. We were focused on our project just like we were every weekend. The kids were running amuck, in and out of the house, beating on each other, crying, laughing, asking a BILLION questions, just like every single day with children. The occasional person would yell from the street asking us if we were having a garage sale. We'd just shake our heads and continue with our work. At one point I came out of the garage to see a guy casually walking with our lawn mower up the driveway headed toward the street. I called to him but he kept walking. Finally I ran up to him explaining that we weren't having a garage sale. He kind of looked at me and I realized he didn't understand English.... My first clue was when he tugged the lawn mower back from me, muttering something and continued to walk. About that time my husband came out of the garage and between the two of us got the point across that "WE WEREN'T HAVING A GARAGE SALE" in the ubber slow and loud way you speak to someone who doesn't speak your language..... As if speaking really loud and really slow will suddenly make them understand. The only thing he really understood was that we were morons for deciding to clean our garage on the weekend of the World's Largest Garage Sale, and we were total goobers for getting upset when people started trying to haul our stuff off. We finally got him shewed off our property, looked at each other and decided maybe we should tackle this.... hmmm next weekend. Fast forward to today. Today is the beginning the the annual garage sale, but things have changed a lot. There isn't as many garage sales as there used to be. There isn't near the amount of traffic or hoopla about the weekend and.... You will find me.... Sleeping late with no bitty voices bidding me to waits up, padding around the house accomplishing absolutely nothing and my shades drawn tight. I will however, have every hair in place and my makes-up on, because not everything has changed.