After a six-week hiatus from sales (and blogging), we ventured out last Saturday–possibly despite our better judgment, but we figured it was time. There wasn’t that much rain, and there were a few sales listed …

Our first stop had been advertised as moving after 50+ years. Sounds pretty good! We walked in through the garage, which was full of things for sale, both new and old. Inside was this workshop area complete with outlined spots for tools and pictures of airplanes.

People were milling around from room to room. Meghan went to investigate some clothes hanging up in one corner. “Those aren’t for sale!” we heard. Okay, fine. We ventured into the next room, sort of confused as to what was in the sale and what wasn’t.

I poked around a bit then headed back outside to make another look around. I got a kick out of this small selection of ancient grocery items, but didn’t find anything I needed to own.

Finally I went back inside and found Meghan handing over some cash to the woman who’d told her to keep out of the clothes. As we left she told me that the entire room was supposed to be off limits, but since that wasn’t even remotely obvious, tons of people had been digging around and buying stuff anyway. Meghan made sure the lady knew what she had and was cool with selling everything. She ended up purchasing an awesome vintage sewing bag and a couple of other small items.

On the way out we saw Jesus.

We made a coffee stop, then headed to an estate sale which was due to open at ten, still a few minutes away. When we saw the line outside we weren’t sure whether to bother, especially after our last experience waiting in line for a sale. But we parked the car and walked over — nearly getting knocked down on the way by a man running with his small daughter in order to get there ahead of us. “Really?” Meghan asked loudly, but he pretended not to hear her. We couldn’t tell if there were numbers, a sign-up sheet, or just a line. Meghan went up to investigate and came back muttering something about possibly needing to re-evaluate her entire life.

The sellers opened the door (a few minutes late) and miraculously decided to let everyone in, since the house was big enough for the thirty or forty of us to all mill about. The setup was a bit odd: one room would have like ten things in it, then another would have three boxes … for a big house, they really didn’t have very much. I saw the guy who had rushed past us carrying around light bulbs and nothing else, so that tells you something. They did have a very cool, very old wedding dress. I attempted to take a picture of it, then later discovered I had actually taken a five-second video. Of a dress sitting on a hanger. I will spare you from spending five seconds of your life watching that.

We were done after that. It felt like if there was a holiday like Groundhog Day, where some yard sale totem animal — the pack rat? — came out of its hole to see if it was time to start going to sales again … that animal would have crawled back in and gone back to sleep for a few more weeks.

But we are either optimistic, or masochistic, or just plain dumb, because we are heading back out tomorrow!