A Roller Coaster Day, Part One

(and how my honey survives the ride)

Yesterday was a pretty rough day around here on so very many fronts.  I spent yesterday morning with my brother.  Never a good way to start the day!  As a result, I was frustrated and highly irritable, and that was before my honey took me to a haunted house. My poor honey!  He was in for a roller coaster ride of a day.

It all started out fairly innocently.  My mom asked us to come over and be the sales crew at her latest yard sale.  The reason the yard sale was needed at all had me irritated before the big day even arrived.  My brother had asked my mom if he could use her yard to host a yard sale a few weeks ago.  She'd said yes and that was a mistake.  My brother and his wife brought over tons of old baby clothes and baby toys that my nephew had outgrown.  But, when it didn't all sell on yard sale day, did they pack it up and take it home? Nope.  Did they load it in the truck and take it to Goodwill? Nope.  They left all their junk piled up in my mom's sunroom from floor to ceiling.

My mom assumed they wanted to have another yard sale the following weekend to try to get rid of the rest.  A week went by and then two weeks... no yard sale.  She asked them when they wanted to have another yard sale to get rid of the rest.  My sister-in-law bluntly told my mother that she didn't ever want to go through the hassle of a yard sale ever again.  So, my mom asked them to load up the junk and take it to Goodwill.  They had a myriad of excuses for why they couldn't.  The SUV was too full already.  They had somewhere else to go after they left mom's house.  Goodwill wouldn't be open by the time they got back.  It all boiled down to one thing: they were leaving the stuff at mom's house with no immediate or even distant plans to move it.

Being an intelligent and competent parent, my mother created her own plan for their abandoned stuff.  She would hold a yard sale without them.  She would sell their stuff and pocket the profits.  You snooze, you lose!  She invited my honey and I over to help out.  We weren't really excited about having the early shift at the yard sale, but my mom was really upset about the mess in her house and super ticked at my brother for his lack of effort to correct the situation.  I didn't mention this in last week's blog, but she cried when she thanked me for coming over to clean.  The mess was upsetting her that much.  So, we stepped up to help mom out.

The big day arrived, my honey and I peeedl our eyelids up, and headed over to mom's house only to find...


wait for it...


wait for it...


(You know what's coming already, don't you?)


You guessed it!

My brother had dragged his lazy butt over to mom's house and was claiming all proceeds from the yard sale.  Now, before you start thinking that he had every right to do that, know this...if she hadn't decided to have that yard sale without my brother, he would have left that stuff at her house to rot forever.  He didn't want it and he wasn't going to dispose of it.  Possession is nine tenths of the law, after all.  The stuff was in my mother's house, therefore it now belonged to her.

To make matters worse, my brother had brought along my nephew.  Squirt was eyeing all his old toys and claiming that we couldn't sell them.  I love Squirt, but he should not have been present at a yard sale where we were selling his old toys.  To solve this dilemma,  my honey and I were pulled from the sales staff and converted into daycare providers.

That's right, my honey and I were assigned to Operation: Keep Squirt Busy.

So we took Squirt for a walk...



we fed the ducks...



and we went to the playground for a swing.

Are you starting to see the roller coaster of it all yet?
Up super early on a Saturday, bad. 
Obnoxious brother at yard sale, bad. 
Spending the morning playing with Squirt, good.

My brother thanking me for helping out at "his" yard sale, bad.
My brother being lazy and not helping clean up after the yard sale, bad.
My honey and I going to the local craft fair to pick up pit beef sandwiches for the family, good.

That second one is almost counter-intuitive, isn't it? I should have been glad he said thank you, but instead I was pissed he thanked me for coming to "his" yard sale. If it had really been his yard sale, I wouldn't have had to be there at all, damn it.

Yard sale fiasco over, we headed home and got ready for our evening plans: the Haunted Mill.