30 hours of no kids.....

First let me say, I absolutely LOVE, LOVE, LOVE my girls! They are SOOOO important to me and a main part of my life. But hey, EVERYONE needs a break now and then.

Friday I went up to Burbank to see my sister and have a garage sale with her, to get rid of the remaining things of my mom's that none of us wanted. I was so torn going up there. On the one hand, I was looking forward to being without children for a while, but on the other hand, I did NOT want to do this garage sale. It's almost like one of the final steps of saying goodbye to my mom. Plus we have done so much work trying to get through probate and such, and we are just tired of it all. We want it to be done.

Once I got on the road though, I was fine. It didn't matter that I was stuck in MAJOR traffic, I had the music blaring, and I didn't have to turn it down to listen to what my children wanted to say to me. I was free for a while! :)

Once I got up there, my sister and I had the daunting task of going through each room and clearing it out (we had gone through so much beforehand, thank goodness, so it wasn't THAT much, but it was enough). We both confessed to each other that we did NOT want to do this garage sale, but we knew it had to be done. My father-in-law came over too, to help out and my sister's boyfriend was there too to help us get the big things out. My cousin came down from Vegas too, to see the house one last time. She was able to go through things and take things she wanted, which was good.

We got pretty much everything priced, said goodbye until the next day.

Fast forward to the next morning. The garage sale started at 8 a.m., but we got there at 7:00 a.m., to start putting things out. Of course there were people already waiting to check things out, but they had to wait until we got everything else out of the house.

I must say, that even though we were not looking forward to doing this, we did have a good time doing it. We made it enjoyable. We made jokes about things, we talked about things that were mom's to people who bought them. There was a picture of a tree at sunset that a lady bought and when I told her it was one of my mom's favorite's, she asked me what mom's name was and said that she owns a theatre on Magnolia and that she was going to name the picture "Janet's Tree" and that anyone who walked in there, would see the sign. That made me and my sister get choked up with emotion that was so sweet! Then there was another picture a friend of my mom's had drawn for her. It was a picture of four animated girls in a bathtub that said,

There's too many kids in the tub
There's too many elbows to scrub
I just washed the behind
Of one that's not mine
There's too many kids in the tub.

I told the person about the story behind it, how the four girls in the tub represented me, my two sisters and my baby cousin (whom my mom watched for my aunt at nights, since my aunt worked nights at the post office)

It was SO nice being able to tell people the stories behind the things that people bought! Some people asked about the house, if we were selling it too, and so I was able to tell the story about the house too. About how my grandma bought it in 1950 with my grandpa John. After my Grandpa John passed away in 1957, the house was paid off, thanks to the good sense they had to buy mortgage insurance in case something happened to one of them. I told them how it has been in our family for 56 years, how my grandparents paid $40,000 for it, and so on.

So while I didn't want to go up there at first, I am SO glad I did. It was nice to be able to tell stories about my grandparents, and my mom and be able to smile about the things I was saying. I do hope that the people who were listening knew that everything I said was coming from the heart.

Oh, we did have one :::::::::::::::shudder::::::::::::::::: moment! There was a TV stand we were selling (and by the way it never ended up getting sold) and one of the shelves was flipped down at an angle. Well, this one woman was looking at it and she went to flip up the shelf and screamed and dropped it again. I saw it happen and I was curious as to why she did that, because she didn't say what she saw. So I flipped it up and inside ::::::::::::::::shudder::::::::::::::::::, was a LIVE......LIVING........... NOSE TWITCHING.........BEADY-EYED MOUSE!!!!!!!!!!!

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK!!!!!!!

Yea, you can better believe that I screamed too!!!! I was in the driveway in the back and my sister was up in the front yard of the house and SHE heard me scream! I went walking very fast up to the front of the house yelling, "JOOOOOOSSSSSSHHHHH!!!!!!!" No way was I lifting that thing back up to let it out!!!! But my Father-In-Law, bless his soul, lifted the shelf up and let the little critter go. :::::::::::::::::::::::Shudder::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: YUCK!!!!

Oh, and there were these people who were looking at a OUIJA board game that my other sister had and for some reason we never got rid of it. I joked with them, that we'd pay them $.50 to take it instead of them paying us to have it. I joked that we keep trying to get rid of it, but it just keeps coming back! We've had five people buy it, but somehow it keeps coming back (ALL joking of course, it just never got tossed) My mom was not a COMPLETE packrat, but it did take her a LONG time to get rid of things.

I'll tell you one thing though, it sure makes me want to go through all my stuff and purge even more! I have to keep reminding myself to do that every year, even when I get old. I don't want to have to have my children go through all the stuff that we had to go through.

Of course the ride home was horrendous though. It took me FOUR HOURS to get home, when it normally takes TWO! It took me TWO hours to go SIXTY miles. EEEK!!! That's how bad the freeways were on the way home.

I did come home with a few things though. The high chair that had been in my family since my Uncle Dan, 64 years ago. Every child and grandchild has sat in that chair and I couldn't let it leave the family. Hubby's parents gave us their china cabinet, some magnets that were on my mom's refrigerator and some papers.

So even though I didn't want to go, I did, and I'm glad I did. It was a VERY nice break from my children.