Yard Sale

Yesterday's yard sale was a huge success! We had a great turnout, purged a ton of stuff from the house & garage, and made enough money to make a sizable deposit into our Travel 2010 savings account. It's funny--when Steven & I were trying to organize things in the garage on Friday night, we actually felt like we didn't have that much stuff to sell. But on Saturday morning, when we started spreading all of the items down the driveway, we suddenly realized why we had been feeling so overwhelmed...we had been living with what seems like 4 households worth of STUFF. No wonder we felt like we were buried alive at times! ;)

Besides the obvious benefits of clearing out the house & making some dough-dough, the yard sale also ended up being sort of a 'meet & greet' with the community. It was such a pleasant surprise and everyone was so welcoming. It was downright heartwarming. We just felt so...supported. People seemed genuinely happy to see a young couple moving in, who have an appreciation for a nice old house, and intentions to shine 'er up a bit. We met a bunch of people who knew the previous owners, too...and I think one of them is going to be my new BFF. She's a super cute, little old Italian grannie...and she had me laughing out loud. We made loose plans to go out for lunch sometime and I'm really looking forward to it. From what we've seen so far, this town has a special breed of Golden Girl, and it just makes me want to say "now that's a spicy meatball!" :)

There was one hiccup in an otherwise wonderful day--we were blindsided by some disgruntled relatives of the previous owner, who are apparently bitter about being left out of her will and chose to lash out at us. Their behavior was extra shocking considering that I had been contacted by, and communicating quite amicably with, one of them regarding the items they would like from the house. It's fair to say that after their appalling behavior yesterday, the sense of good will I had towards them has been replaced by a decidedly less charitable attitude. Ummm....yeah....don't try to appeal to my sense of family and sentimentality and then come by and disrespect my family and my home. (We're talking about some pretty audacious stuff here.) NOT. GONNA. FLY. As my mom said, it's a good thing because this "defined it". We were a little skeptical about their story of woe, but gave them the benefit of the doubt. Now I can very comfortably send them a "this is what's up" email, and never deal with them again.

I'd be lying if I said that I'm not relishing the idea of composing and sending said email. >;]