Garage Sale-ing

So there really isn't too much you can do with a 1 year. Turns out people REALLY judge you when you bring your toddler into a strip club... Also how many "mommy and me" and "library story times" can one sane(questionable) person handle?? More on my loathing of "mommy and me" activities later...
Anyway

What started as a Craigslist hunt for cheap outdoor baby toys somehow violently morphed into a garage sale-ing obsession.

I wonder if garage sales are exclusively American? It seems like something we would do... let's put all of our trash that we painstakingly collected over the years but don't want anymore out on our front lawns for stangers to paw through and haggle over 50 cents just so that in 2 years or so those same strangers will turn around and sell the same thing to a new batch of hagglers... and who says we don't recycle??
For the record, my aunt is one of those people. She goes to garage sales haggles over the last penny and then the NEXT weekend sells the crap for a profit. Part of me thinks my cousin should start checking out some elder-care options for her but a larger part thinks "that is f-ing brilliant". She apparently makes a nice tidy little profit and I think she is addicted to the rush of both scamming the idiot seller who doesn't know the worth of his treasures AND the unsuspecting idiot purchaser who is overpaying for crap....

but I digress
So I live on a corner that will often have those bright neon garage sale signs planted on Thursday evenings. Speaking of which- why do Garage sales start on fridays?? DIGRESSION- This makes me think it is really intended for retirees and stay at homes since we get the head start. Actually it is quite the competition between those two groups because the head start is on the side of the retiree who wakes up at 3 am (on account of them having eaten dinner at 4 pm the previous day) so they are THERE ready to go in their cars waiting for the sale the start. However, the stay at homes have the athletic edge we wear our sneakers and our yoga pants and the physical rigors of child rearing have primed our bodies.

Back to me- so it started with re-routing our morning walks to pass by these sales. A couple of really really awesome purchases later I am totally hooked. I quickly spiraled from looking up the garage sales in the local paper to using Google © Maps to plot out my targets. I leave the house bright and early (gotta beat those retirees) armed with my plotted out map, a detailed city street map, and my baby.

The biggest high is when I go “off map”. (Sigh just typing that makes me realize how much of a loser I am…) Anyway going “off map” is, of course, when you are interrupted from your plotted out map because you see one of those neon garage sale beacons and you start driving hither and yon to go find it and THEN you get there and A) no one is there be/c their advertising strategy harkens back to the early 90s B) there is AMAZING stuff and since they are obviously still in the 90’s the crap is priced from that era! I get a tingle just writing about it...

I also really love haggling. There is something about saving 25 cents that just does it for me. I know its ridiculous but it really is just awesome.
And before you go calling that hoarding show- its not like I buy a bunch of stuff. I am actually really discerning about my purchases and usually only come home with 1 or 2 things.

So that’s my sad sad little tale of entertainment. Before you comment on how lame I am I’m going to beat you to the punch like a fat comedian. I am WELL AWARE this is ridiculous and lame. But hey don’t knock it til you try it…