It is city wide garage sale weekend in Overbrook. I know I have written about this before, but it never ceases to amaze me how many people will show up to buy other people’s old junk. Ahem treasures.
The 4-H club runs a sale as our one major fund raiser per year. We do it like this - ask the community and the club members for donations. Tell them no clothing (because that gets too overwhelming). Have a drop off time. Serve food. Never price any of the donations - just ask for a free will donation. Watch people struggle with their conscious because they want to pay $1 for something they know good and well is worth more, but they don’t want to rip off a bunch of kids. Or the opposite- the “I was in 4-H as a kid here is $20 for an old cup.”
Are there people who will rip off children? Absolutely! But the generous ones far outnumber them. Plus, everything was donated, so if we get $1 for something we didn’t have to purchase, we are still ahead right? Not to mention, if they haul it away, we don’t have to! I have never seen the sale make less than $1200, and today was no exception.
One thing I don’t think I have done at my years of garage sale service is freeze my buns off like we did today! It was a lovely 34 degrees with a brisk breeze. It was brutal. At one point I thought i saw the grim reaper, and I almost ran out to welcome him because I was cold and delirious! Turns out, it was not, in fact the reaper, it was a nice Amish woman who was selling baked goods in the building next door. She was wearing her bonnet and a cape style coat! Which is how guilt caused me to buy her baked goods and bring them home. That guilt cost me a lot of money, but I did get a couple amazing pies out of it!
I was very proud of our club kids today! They were amazingly helpful and worked hard. I know they were cold, but I didn’t hear many complaints. I do know Casey’s sold a ton of hot chocolate though! Preston and Quincy had to work at their weekend job, but they did one heck of a good job last night cleaning the building, setting up tables and carrying donations before I even got there. Harper and Saige worked all day today helping with organization, putting together food orders, and making change. I was so proud of them!
Today was also the Overbrook fishing derby. Evelyn was sooo excited about it! Yesterday, she asked me if I was coming to watch her fish. I told her I would come for a little while, but that I was also helping with a garage sale.
I took a couple of breakfast burritos and ran over to watch her. If I thought it was cold at the garage sale, which was inside a building, I was wrong. It was cold at the lake. Outside, with the wind whipping over the water, it was Absolutely miserable! Evie told me she was cold! She was happy to hold a breakfast burrito because it warmed her hands up! Harper and I made it about 10 minutes before we threw in the towel and scurried to the car! Evie said she caught zero fish! My mom took Clayton in for his age group, and said he didn’t catch any fish either.
Jim worked at the fishing derby. They set up some warming stations- grills with hedge burning to stand beside. He said it was pretty miserable and he thought they should have considered moving it back a week or 2.
Meanwhile, as I’m freezing half to death, I got some beautiful, warm looking photos from the Florida crew! I was insanely jealous. Send me some warm air kids!
As we were cleaning up, I had a couple of phone calls and texts from my lawyer and my engineer at work both telling me my email had been hacked. I stopped by the office to change my password. I grabbed the girls, texted Jim and we headed for home. That’s when Jim texted “caught the truck on fire on my way home - happy Matt (the mailman) had a fire extinguisher or I’d have even in real trouble!” Ummm excuse me sir….what? Are you ok? Do you need us to pick you up? He was at home. He put the hedge logs they used in the warming stations in a bucket in his truck. He had poured water on them and thought they were extinguished. Apparently they were not. He said he was driving along, singing along with Alabama on the radio, when he looked up and saw flames. Whoops! Our neighbor girl and the mailman stopped to help (thank God!). Let’s just say it left a mark. I’m glad it worked out as a shake my head and laugh type of story, rather than a tragedy.
Also this week, Quincy had a signing day at Washburn Tech. Her intent is to go into their culinary program during her senior year next year. I’m excited for her! The good news is that due to some grants, the first year won’t cost her anything. She is smart for taking advantage of this opportunity. Tonight, she and Harper made dinner so she could work on her skills. They made Chinese food including sweet and sour wings, fried rice and Fortune cookies. It was amazing! The one thing that they didn’t warn us about in advance - Harper was in charge of the fortunes. She decided to make misfortune cookies. This should come with a disclaimer, as I don’t want an STD, Preston wasn’t amused with getting kidney failure, either. Jim wondered if “you will catch your truck on firel was in the future or in the past!
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