The lady doth protest too much, methinks

It turns out that my neighbors, the ones that aren't garage sale people?  They aren't, until they see one in action and then it seems they're attracted to them like moths to a flame.  Saturday was Garage Sale Day at House Hondo and from the minute that preparations began my high falutin' neighbors just couldn't stay away from the action.

On Wednesday Mr. Neighbor wandered over to compliment me on my mad classified ad writing skillz. How would he know about my gift of the oversell?  He always reads the newpaper classifieds. 

On Thursday he came over to see how the clean-out was going and informed that he would never have one of these because he didn't want to have to clean his garage for strangers.  I told him he had one day left to haul his merchandise northward and he assured me that he wasn't interested - until an hour later when he and Mrs. Neighbor came hauling a child's Cozy Coupe and three enormous black garbage bags full of treasure into my garage.

I hadn't been outside for more than 10 minutes on Friday morning before he came strolling over to see how things were going. He came back two more times that day just to survey my work. Later that day someone stopped by who knew that the sale was advertised for Saturday but wondered if they could look early.  Guess what they puchased first? That's right. A Cozy Coupe.

Saturday morning came and within an hour of opening the doors, Mr. Neighbor was back for a visit. Despite my apparent finesse with the classified ad,  I really can't effectively put words to how delighted I was to hand him a $5 bill for his trouble.  He protested accepting it for about 0.3 seconds and then practically skipped back home waving his green-tinted Lincoln. 

An hour later Mrs. Neighbor appeared. She brought a gift of Coca-Cola because when she sent Mr. Neighbor to the grocery store that morning he wanted to get us a treat for our trouble. She stayed for the better part of 20 minutes quite obviously totally intrigued. 

A bit later we sold some more of their goodies and so, just basically to entertain myself and my mom, I sent the boys next door with another $2. They returned with Mr. Neighbor and the Neighbor Kids, who went to play in our yard. That left Mr. Neighbor back in our garage playing Chatty Kathy.

All in all the Garage Sale of 2010 was a success. We found happy homes for a lot of things that we no longer needed or wanted and people paid us to haul them away.  By 5 p.m. last night I was able to get the car back in the garage and after one more trip to a social service agency this week the mess will be completely gone.

Special sale shout outs go to:

• my mom, without whom I would have bailed on the project at about 10 a.m. on Friday when preparing all the mess was overwhelming me
• my dad, who removed Andrew and Thomas from the premises for most of the morning making it possible to have strangers remove their outgrown toys
• Mark, who never complained about the fact that I brought the wrong bike into the house for easy access, forcing him to ride a second-tier bike on Saturday morning and exit through a throng of bargain shoppers while wearing full-on lycra and a helmet
• Thomas, for wearing Grandma's "money belt" with pride upon his return and for being the best sale helper that any four-year-old has ever been
• The Neighbors, for participating in one of the most entertaining sociology experiments I've ever witnessed!