Sleepless Nights, a Yard Sale, Some Blueberries, and a Bug

Yes, we're still alive.

And yes, I do have good reasons for not posting in over ten days. (Please refer to title). Let's just start at the beginning, shall we? (And yes, it's going to be long).

A couple weeks ago, a lady from our neighborhood put an open invitation on everyone's doors to participate in a neighborhood yard sale. As one who has never attempted such a thing, and as one whose home is really nothing more than a poorly packed 1200 sq. ft. storage container for the massive stockpile of clothing, toys and miscellaneous boy equipment that we've managed to acquire over the past 4 1/2 years, well, I heard myself saying, "Now is as good a time as any." So I rsvp'd to the yard sale invitation. We were in.

Allow me to illustrate for you my 31-year-long attempt at perfecting a master skill set of procrastination, which is about to come into play. I will offer examples like my junior (?) year of high school, when I took American Studies, an honors class combining American History with English Lit, and requiring students to present a "thematic" each Friday (an artistic or otherwise creative effort that illustrated the topic of the accompanying 3-5 page paper). I would spend Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday deciding on a topic, and then would always, and I mean always wait until Thursday night to start the paper and the project. That's right, the tried-and-true all-nighter, invariably with the 4 a.m. finale stint in my parents' garage attempting calligraphy and dipping paper into tea then burning off the edges to make the document look hundreds of years old and straight out the Smithsonian. You'd think a year of that kind of nonsense (all A's on those thematics, by the way), along with four years of college nonsense (far from all A's) would force me to re-examine my time management philosophies. If not that, then maybe the time I moved from IL to Memphis, and waited until the day before I left town to start packing up my apartment, then drove eight hours south to my new apartment on no sleep. True story.

As it turns out, the only thing that has brought even the slightest improvement to that area is Cable and Parker. The birth of twins pretty plainly requires you to admit that you may not even still be standing the night before whatever it is has to be done, so you better just freakin get it done.

I digress. Filled with what I can only assume was some rare form of community spirit, I responded to a second invitation to help with the execution of the neighborhood sale, and volunteered to help out with the signs. I took a look at the leader's prototype, obtained the necessary supplies, and was all set to work (on schedule! I made a schedule and I was still on it!) when it happened.

As usual, when I got home from work last Tuesday, I had bumped my AC back down a couple degrees to get the house more comfortable. My AC isn't the most efficient system in the world even when functioning, but it at least cools certain areas off enough to be pleasant, so when I the house didn't feel any cooler after an hour, I took a look at the thermostat and realized the temperature inside our house had actually risen several degrees. (And not two minutes after this discovery, the lead story on the five o'clock news was something like "Memphis Summer Finally Hits"). It was, in fact, according to Joe Birch, the hottest day of the year so far, so OF COURSE my air conditioner decided to throw in the towel.

Given the current state of home improvement affairs at this address, I staved off a mental breakdown by telling myself there was no need to panic, the filter just needed to be changed, so after calling in the supports (Keith), I escaped to the blissfully air conditioned Target where I bought a new filter and a new fan for good measure, and wished I had a longer shopping list. I returned to the inferno and sent Keith up to the attic to change out the filter with a "Hey, while you're up there... go ahead and bring down all that baby stuff that I keep insisting be saved. I'm going to sell it."

Long story slightly shortened,

1. The new filter didn't help at all.
2. I eventually ended up in the attic myself to look through bins of baby clothes, toys, and other random stuff. (Now there's a way to make your 85 degree house feel more comfortable -- spend half an hour in the ATTIC and come back down).
3. I saved those baby clothes for a reason: Because even though I always feel like my first two years of motherhood are a total blur, I remember dressing Cable and Parker in those clothes. I can remember actual days when they wore these, or those. I can still see them in those outfits like it was yesterday, and I just can't send that walking down the street for a dollar. Needless to say, I came down with several things to sell, but no baby clothes.

I slept very little Tuesday night, called a highly recommended AC company the next morning, didn't sleep at ALL Wednesday night, and then on Thursday afternoon the AC guy saved us and only had to clean my outside unit to make us the residents of the most comfortably, consistently cooled home on the block! (God BLESS air conditioning and AJ Refrigeration!) I was so pleased with the new temperature in my house that I worked on the signs for my 4 designated intersections for the rest of the night.



Fast forward to Friday evening. On the way home from work, Michelle called. (Explaining who Michelle is would be a whole separate post; really, she deserves her own blog. But for now just know that "Miss Michelle," as the boys call her, and her husband, "Dr. Dave," are the wonderful people who care for Cable and Parker when I can't). So Michelle called and asked if the boys would be able to come over to swim on Saturday. After a brief rundown explaining the plans for the yard sale, Michelle (yard sale with children veteran, apparently) said "How about you bring them over tonight and they can spend the night and we'll keep them until you're done with the sale."

This is where I tell you that, to the best of my recollection, there have been three occasions in 4 1/2 years that I have spent the night in my house without Cable and Parker. They are, in order:

1. The night before Keith and I moved to our last apartment, and one of my friends from work kept the boys (10 mos.) overnight so we could get moved.
2. The night before my A.M. flight to New York in Feb. 2007 when Michelle and Dave were keeping the boys during my trip.
3. The night before my A.M. flight to Boston in July 2007 when... same as above. :)

I may be forgetting something, but I really think this is it. So when Michelle offered an overnight stay for the boys so I could prepare for a yard sale and then to keep them for the day so I could conduct a yard sale sans monsters, I had to say yes. I mean, who would say no to THAT?

So we arrived home, I packed a few necessities, got the boys back in the car, and headed back east to hand them over.

Since the list thing is working for us:
1. The yard sale was fine. Wouldn't "order it" again, but it was ok...
2. Yes, Keith helped. Because I had PROCRASTINATED (see, there it is) gathering my items to sell, getting ready would've been much more difficult without him.
3. Didn't make a ton of money, but minus the cost of the signs, made a little. I've decided that the positive spin on the whole experience is that I did something I've never done before, I took on a pretty big project with lots of steps and completed it, and I got rid of a bunch of stuff we didn't really need.
4. The best part was when a little Mexican boy about six years old came up with his mom and baby sister, and saw a wooden parking deck toy that had been handed down to us. We'd been selling toys so well that we got a second batch of stuff down from the attic, and I'd priced it at just $1.00. It was a steal. The boy saw it from the street and made a bee-line for it, and after going back and forth with his mother en Espanol, she gave me the dollar and, man, he picked that thing up and just had the biggest grin on his face walking down the driveway... it was great.
5. Under the "What Was I Thinking???" category, I was nuts to think Cable and Parker would've been ok here at home with us during that yard sale. It was super hot, pretty boring, and one of us would have been in and out of the house with them all... day... long. Thank goodness for Michelle!

The boys thoroughly enjoyed their stay in Miss Michelle Land. (It is, after all, the closest thing they'll know to Disneyland for a long time). They hunted for tiny spiders in the corners of the house and then Michelle disposed of them, they swam (Parker conquered last summer's fear and did his first jump off the diving board, then did about 99 more, according to Michelle's best estimate), and on Saturday morning they went to a blueberry farm in Mississippi (where Dr. Dave's truck drove on the grass!) and picked blueberries. Bags and bags of blueberries. When I picked the boys up Saturday evening, she gave us a big bag to take home. We're still eating blueberries by the handful here. And these aren't store-blah blueberries, these are the way they're supposed to taste blueberries.



When we arrived home, the boys had to make sense of completely missing the yard sale that they'd been hearing about for two weeks. And then they discovered a long-lost treasure now peeking out from behind their downsized 3T clothing: The Bug Costumes.

A while back, my parents found two really nice bug costumes for a bargain price on vacation, and not even my Dad could pass up the prospect of seeing his grandsons decked out in these. Parker, for your viewing pleasure:



Yesterday I awoke to two of these creatures standing next to my bed. Here's hoping they'll want to be bugs for Halloween this year...

And so that's a run down of the last ten days' major events. I know it was a lot, so thanks for sticking with me to the end. Just be glad I didn't get into the parts about blueberries on the floor... or in the laundry... or stuck to the side of the couch. Yep.