TGS (The Garage Sale) or TG's Revisited

Those of you who are regular visitors have already heard the saga of TG's (The Garage), which was full of the results of combining two households of 'stuff' and not full of our cars! They had been relegated to the driveway, rain, wind and even occasional snow, instead of the beautiful two car garage with workshop standing so enticing near.

Well, several weeks ago, we decided to do something about this deplorable situation and have that most American of weekend activities: THE GARAGE SALE.

For the uninitiated, a garage sale is where all the stuff you had to have (but now don't) is put out on tables in your garage (hence the name) or yard (weather permitting) and sold for about 10 cents on the dollar. Even with the low, low prices, you can count on most of the people who show up trying to get you to go even lower. It is rather humiliating to have that beautiful set of everyday dishes that you just love (but your husband hates) marked at $8.00 for a full set of 12, but finally selling at $6.00. How revolting!!!!

We, of course, never doing anything half way, had a HUGE garage sale. It took us a week to price things and four days to put everything out. We had everything from lawn tractors, a double hung hollow core door, antique school desk, laminating machine, the previously mentioned dishes (actually 3 sets of dishes), three crock pots, 4 clock radios, and a partridge in a pear tree.....(whoops, wrong song). Instead of the partridge, we had a 1990 Dodge minivan.

Being the unique people that we are, we sold more the day before the sale officially opened than the other two days combined!! It helped that we sold the van on Thursday, another $300 of stuff to friends, and then made another $450 the other two days. It was great. I, of course, was resorting to bribery the last few hours to get rid of the mountain of baskets: "Use a basket to shop with and you get it free with any purchase!"

All and all, it went really well.....except some of it is left and now I have to box it up, and give it away so we can get ready for the next garage sale, since we only were able to make room for one car. The other one is sulking in the driveway and we fear mechanical repercussions if it doesn't get shelter soon!

Pretty Feet

I have been thinking alot about feet the past year. Although the feet in the picture may not look that pretty to you, they look absolutely amazing to me...since they are the result of two surgeries, eleven incisions, three screws, and six removable pins. For about four of the past nine months, my feet looked like something from a Frankenstein movie. I even freaked out our granddaughter who wants to be a vet....pins sticking out the end of a person's toes will do that to some people.

What is amazing is how much better they look and feel than they did before the surgery. My big toes pointed to the outside at about 3 and 10 o'clock, the three toes between my biggest and smallest toes were curled up into claws, unable to straighten out and I could barely walk without my shoes. Even in shoes, I had trouble, since my feet were so wide it was next to impossible to find shoes that fit. My shoe size has shrunk from an 11 WW to a 9-1/2 W. Amazing!

What this whole experience has taught me is this:

1. You don't get very far if your feet hurt.

2. A lot of pain for a short while is worth the price of being able to walk freely again.

3. Pretty is a relative term....I think my feet are beautiful now!

Have a great day and be good to your feet!

M.A.A.

It is time to confess....yes, I should belong to M.A.A. That stands for Movie Addicts Anonymous. In fact, I am married to a fellow addict. What else would you call people who have seen three first run movies in the last 4 days, have two rental movies to return to the video store by Thursday, and have so many videos and DVDs that we need an Excel spreadsheet to keep track of them?

The problem with being an addict is that it doesn't have to be a good movie to hold our attention. In fact, we seem to be enamoured of really bad movies, since they are so bad they are funny.We belong to the Regal Theatre club, so on Tuesdays we get free popcorn with our movie membership. Today we took our two free movie tickets (earned by attending so many movies last month) and watched that masterpiece of cinematography: NACHO LIBRE. It fits right up there with one of my husband's all time favorites, WHITE PONGO, and will probably make it's way into our video library sometime in the future. For those of you who are uninitiated....WHITE PONGO was made in the 1940's and is every cliche about Africa you can imagine, up to and including a porter named: Mumbo Jumbo. What is really scary is that we have at least 4 more 'D' movies for the same time period and genre that we haven't viewed yet.

Help us!!!! Let us know if you know where the local chapter of M.A.A. meets and we promise to go....right after we watch another video.