The Houghs Throw an Ad Hoc Garage Sale, and Other Tales

I've been stuck in a portable during FCAT Testing.

How's it going, America?

Well, the school year's starting to slow down a bit as we enter that final gauntlet towards Summer.  It's been a pretty hectic year - not stressful, but busy.

Holy crap has it been busy.

Usually school-related warfare is limited to Yours Truly, but since Alayna's now in kindergarten, we've doubled the load of homework around here. . . which, believe me, sucks.

Setting up shop

We're still three weeks or so away from being able to breathe, and lately our weekends have been packed with social obligations, other kids' birthdays, field trips, girl scouts outings, and tons of other crap that robs me of my sitting-in-the-sun-and-reading-a-book-and-having-a-pipe time.

Time to sell some crap. . .

Like community garage sales, if you will.

Kris and Watson.  Having a blast.

We knew our subdivision hosted an annual garage sale sometime in May, but - for whatever reason - our HOA decided not to advertise said event.  Nor did they bother telling their own residents when this event would be - Kris had to email the director (leader?) of the HOA in order to get an answer.

Turns out it was today.  Hurrah.

We had about four days notice to decide what crap around the house we were willing to get rid of on the fly, which wasn't much time really at all.  That barely gave us time to clear out space in the garage to sort through all of our crap we were willing to part with, and so it was to no surprise that we didn't end up raking in a fortune this time around.  There was barely any traffic to speak of, and from 8am to 11am, when we called it quits, we took in a profit of about $70.

Ka - ching.

$40 of that was the kids' PowerWheel, which we bought for $65 three years prior.  Not bad.  Another $10 was made by selling two really shitty N64 games that I haven't played since I was 15.  The rest was old kids books (because our house is a library and we have mountains of books), some puzzles and games, old toys, and a Brita filter/pitcher that some Indian family spent ten minutes analyzing before buying it for $2.

Clean water is really, really important to some people.

All in all, it was pretty meh day. . . but at least we got some fresh air, I guess.  And we cleared a huge space out of our garage, which was cool.

And I suppose that $70 could buy us a coffee at Starbucks, or a small popcorn the next time we take our kids to the movies.  So there's that.

Here's some other pictures for you.  Enjoy:

Waiting for Dr. Eckert at All-Star Pediatrics (Abby was bit by mosquitos awhile ago and scratched the bites so much that they became infected - hooray)

I had to leave work early to take her to the doctor.  I hate taking time off when a kid's not even that sick.

This looks like Abby's lighting a cigarette (she wasn't.)

Kris helps Alayna finish a project for her class.  She had to make a book review presentation on her favorite book, which - inexplicably - is Dr. Seuss' Green Eggs and Ham (which she never reads.)

Gossip time.

Selfies

We knew we had a peach tree in the backyard, but the previous two years we haven't seen much from it in terms of a harvest crop.  This year made up for it.  And then some.

My backyard, somewhat resurrected.  Many hours of sweat and toil went into the weed holocaust that I orchestrated here.

Millions of peaches. . .

Ol' Ma Kris, up in the tree, bringin' in the peach harvest. . .

We're growing so many Goddamn peaches that they're falling on the ground and rotting before we can pick them off the tree.  We try in the evenings, after work, but by then countless dozens have fallen on the ground and been ransacked by insects.  You can imagine how awesome that smells.

Those peaches that do survive and find their way into our kitchen are pretty good, though.

- Brian