Be careful what you ask for...

For the past several months I have been making a conscious effort to pray frequently for rain and to give God praise for every drop we got. When your income can be so greatly affected by whether or not consumers can water flowers, you have to enlist the help of the Almighty. Well, I had forgotten one little element that would help us get rain (and plenty of it)...HAVE A YARD SALE.

I don't know why I do yard sales. Every time I'm lugging out my stuff, I really think it isn't worth the effort. I mean, for real, the world can do without my recycled junk (I mean valuable stuff).I recall once when John was summonsed to help me get out tables to display my "valuable stuff" on, he offered to just pay me the $50 or so dollars I'd make for him just to NOT have to mess with it all. You see, I never make much money because I don't have anything really big or good to sell. But somehow, reselling the stuff seems like the thing I should do.

I guess you could say having yard sales is sort of a family tradition for us. (I know that is a major redneck statement). But, I can't deny the truth. If you have ever seen my mama's yard when we are having a sale, you would understand. We always have at least two families saleing. Sometimes as many as 5 or 6. It was 3 families on this last day. We literally have junk (I mean valuable stuff) on tables, hanging, laying on the ground and otherwise strewn all over the whole yard. Trust me it's worth walking over from the store to just look at. We've almost caused more than one traffic jam or accident as people squeeze for a spot in our parking lot. Plus, the yard sale becomes a little family reunion of sorts. All the kids and a few aunts, uncles, and cousins always stop by to visit on the front porch. What can I say? It doesn't take much of an event to give us an excuse to visit.

So back to this last yard sale. Laura and I had decided that we had too much stuff and it HAD to go. We were spring cleaning and getting rid of this stuff once and for all. I spent a couple of days getting my stuff out of the attic and sorted. I paired up all Libby's cute little out-grown clothes to sale. I evaluated all the value and carefully picked my prices.I was ready. I spent Friday night (after 9 hours after work) setting up and placing all my items out for sale. Saturday morning it up at the crack of dawn to offer the world all my junk for great prices. Well, business was a little slow. It had turned out cold that day and just who cares much about yard sales when it's cold outside.

By 10:30 or so we got one little short sprinkle. We checked the radar and decided by 11:30 we'd get lunch at the store and then we'd pack up before rain set in. Once we had eaten it was time to clean up. By now, Libby is no longer interested so I begin deciding what of her stuff could simply be trashed (her being away playing with Stephen and Thomas was actually conducive to my cleaning up her stuff). I think I had thrown most of her junk away when the rain started. I thought, for sure, it would be light and we'd continue to pack up real quick. Well, I realized when the rain started that all my junk suddenly became "valuable stuff" as I scrambled to pack it all up before it got soaked. At this point, my intelligent mind forgot that this was all junk that "had to go". Well the rain literally set in from the start...we all ended up throwing tarps over the stuff and standing on the front porch scratching out heads on what to do now.

We managed to get stuff up and all my clothes had to hang under my garage a couple of days to just dry out before I packed them up again. It was another day of lugging the tables away and placing all the junk (valuable stuff) back in boxes and in the attic again. I made a total of $91.00 that day...man, I think I did pretty good...What cha' think?