aaarrggghhguuurrrggllesnooorrrrk

I made a decision when I started this blog that if I didn't have anything interesting or funny to share, I wouldn't bother to write. So many blogs turn into "here's what I ate today, here's what I'm reading, and did anyone predict what was going to happen on Lost last night?" and I personally don't enjoy reading things like that, even if I wrote it. Nobody cares what I had for lunch today, unless it fell out of the sandwich and made a Virgin-Mary-shaped stain on my trousers, so why bother writing about it? Anyway, I've been suffering from a hideous attack of allergies for the past few days, leading me to be largely sleepless and consequently grumpy ... I figured I'd spare everyone the details of what's draining (or not), what I'm taking (or not) and how many times I've contemplated sui- or homi-cide. But topics are backing up on me, and maybe the typing will help clear the blockage in my .... oh, nevermind.

Anyway, Liza's birthday was last weekend, and as you can tell from my posts, we celebrated by doing absolutely nothing for her. Later in the week, however, I did break down and buy her some cupcakes at the grocery store so we could do the traditional chocolate-smeared-baby photos that are required of new parents. Here you go:

(Video will be available in a few days - I'll link to it in a separate post)
I'm usually not a cake snob, and most of the time I prefer the strangely spongy texture of box mix cakes to homemade, but I do have my standards. Those cupcakes were nasty ... I only ate one, and I regretted wasting the calories on it. Note to self: Next year, no matter how crappy I feel or how many other things I have to do, I will not buy Liza's birthday cake at Wal-Mart. Kroger, maybe, but not Wal-Mart.

One of the billion other things I had to do this week was get together all of the stuff for the community yard sale we had yesterday. This is the second time I've organized the sale for our street, and it's been a big success each time. The organization of the sale isn't that difficult - collect some money, place an ad in the paper, and put up some signs around town - but organizing our stuff for the actual sale is a pain. During the year we have a pile of potential yard sale merchandise that languishes in plastic totes in our basement (and then piles up around the full totes, and then gets crap dropped on them when we work on the wiring in the basement), so I had to drag all that stuff upstairs, clean it off, price it, and get it somewhat organized so that all the kitchen stuff would be together, etc. Then I had to dig all the tables and sawhorses and such out from under the piles of insulation Sam the Electrician has been pulling out of the basement ceiling ... and try to rig a clothes rack to use for the baby items ... and go buy balloons to put on the signs ... all while blowing my nose every five minutes and not being able to hear out of one ear. And did I mention that Jason was up in Cleveland on Thursday and Friday, so I got to do all the last-minute preparations without his help?

Anyway, we decided to open the sale at 8am this year, as last year we opened at 9am and the earlybirds were complaining that it was so late (!). So we got up at 6:30 to start setting up the merchandise and putting out the signs ... I was shooing people away at 7am, and finally broke down and sold something to somebody at 7:30. I hadn't brushed my teeth, combed my hair, or eaten any breakfast at that point, but I was up by 75 cents before the sale officially opened :) Here's what the sale looked like a few minutes later when I went upstairs to get cleaned up:

We had a good day for the sale - sunny but sort of cool, and there were tons of other sales out to lure people to our neighborhood. One lady said she had never seen so many yard sale notices in the local paper before - it was four columns long! Anyway, we were fairly steadily busy up until lunch time, and things really tapered off after noon. By the time we closed at 3pm, we had sold almost all of the big items, a good portion of the small items, and only had one trunkload of stuff left over to take to Goodwill. Net profit on the project: $351.95. I told you it was a good day for the sale!

In case anyone else is planning on doing a sale this summer, here are some tips I've figured out over the past few sales:

1. It may not be cost-effective to put an ad in the paper, unless you live somewhere that is hard to find or doesn't get a lot of traffic. Almost all of the people I asked came to the yard sale because they saw the signs, not because of an ad in the paper. I think next year I may save the ad money and put it toward more and/or better signs.
2. Go to the dollar store and buy a dozen mylar balloons the day before your sale. You can tie them to your signs, attach them to your tables, etc. They're really good for catching the eye of passers-by and getting them to notice that you're having a sale.
3. The more organized you are, the easier it will be for you and your customers. If you can group similar things together (all of the kitchen stuff on the same section of table, all of the baby items near one another, etc.) it helps the customers that are looking for specific things. It also helps you find things if you want to suggest them to customers.
4. Put prices directly on as many things as possible - people don't seem to read the signs that say "everything in this box is $1."
5. Never hestitate to suggest other items to customers who are looking at something. For example, there were two college-aged guys looking at some of our cassette tapes, and after they bought a few and left I remembered I should have suggested our CD storage albums to them.
6. If you live in an area where yard-saling is a family activity, try to have the kid stuff out in plain view where the kids can see it and start pestering their parents for it. And it doesn't hurt to have a box of little things you can give to kids to keep them out of trouble while their parents shop - this sale I had Christmas ornaments that I had priced at 50 cents and that weren't selling, so when kids started to handle adult merchandise, I would take them aside and let them pick one for free. It kept the sale free from breakage, kept me from wanting to strangle the little octopi, and it generated some goodwill from the parents.
7. Be honest if there's something slightly wrong with an item you're selling. People will be more likely to buy an item if they think you're being honest with them ... and some people like the challenge of trying to fix up things that are slightly broken. But don't sell stuff that is actually JUNK - bring it out and mark it as "Free - Use for Parts" or something to that effect.
8. Make sure there is always someone manning your sale, even if you have to pay the kid across the street a couple of quarters to sit there while you go to the bathroom. One family in our sale had to drop their kids off at some sporting event partway through the morning, and they had at least 10 people come look at their stuff while they were gone. I don't know if they would have sold anything if someone had been there, but they certainly didn't when it was unoccupied.
9. You probably won't need as much change as you think, especially if you price things properly. NOTHING LESS THAN A QUARTER, unless you really want to be fooling around with pounds of change. I got $100 in ones, fives, and quarters this time, and I only used $50 of it ... and not even all of that. The earlybirds tend to be the most prepared with small bills, so even if you start off low on change, you'll probably stock up pretty quickly. I think next time I'll limit it to one roll of quarters, $20 in ones, and $20 in fives.
10. Be available to your customers. Don't talk on the phone, read a book, or otherwise look too busy during the sale - your job is to sell these people your stuff, not work on your tan. People have questions, and some of them like to talk. Be personable, be approachable, and for goodness sake, don't act offended if they offer you less than the price marked. Bargaining is a part of the yard sale game - and if you really don't want to do it, post a conspicuous sign that says "all prices are firm." But really, it's better to build some wiggle room into your prices ... people will feel they got a good deal, and you'll have less stuff to carry back to the garage when you're done.
11. Bonus tip: At the end of the sale, designate one large plastic tote bin for stuff that you'll keep to try to sell again. If you were surprised something didn't sell, put it in the tote. If the tote gets full, too bad - everything else goes to Goodwill. Not tomorrow, not next week - TODAY. Back the car up to the table, throw everything in, and say good riddance. Trust me, most of the junk wouldn't sell at the second, or third, or fourth sale any better than it did at the first. You can use the tax writeoff, and the space, more than the junk.

Now that the sale is done, and Sam the Electrician is done with the worst of the "cutting large holes into the plaster and making a huge mess in my house" phase of the rewiring, I guess I'm running out of reasons that my house is such a wreck. I haven't had any friends with kids over to visit in months because the entire house has been some form of toxic choking hazard that possibly includes electrocution. Now I've got to get my act together and start child-proofing again, on the off chance the Liza ever decides to get off her butt and move. Or, more accurately, I need to do the childproofing so I don't have to keep such a close eye on my friends' kids when they come over for playdates ... I really don't want to have to fish screws out of their mouths, or have to look up "resucitation for electrical shock victims" every time they come over, you know?

Liza is still her usual, non-mobile self. Her 12-month checkup was on Tuesday, and she got a clean bill of health (and a polio vaccination). Still in the 90+ percentile on height, still in the 40th percentile on weight, so we can still legitimately call her 'stringbean.' She weighs slightly more than 20 pounds, so we are allowed to use her forward-facing car seat now, which is good because we've been using it for the past few weeks anyway, and we sold her rear-facing seat at the yardsale yesterday. Liza's doctor went ahead and referred her for occupational therapy (OT), but getting that all set up has involved a week of phone calls back and forth to different agencies and insurance companies. First he referred us to the home healthcare agency, in hopes that we could get the therapist to come to our house so Liza wouldn't be so weirded out by going someplace else to do the therapy. They couldn't get approval from my insurance company, so then the doctor had to find a place that was on our insurance that handles pediatric OT, which involved more phone calls and back-and-forth. I still need to go over to fill out some paperwork at the therapy office before I can actually schedule an appointment for Liza ... looks like it's a good thing I started this whole mess when I did, since it's been almost six weeks since I started complaining and the poor kid hasn't gotten a lick of help so far.

One final note before I go fix dinner: We took Liza to get her first haircut today. She's been shaggy for a while, but it was the comment of a friend last weekend ("So, are you letting her grow a mullet intentionally?") that pushed us over the edge.

We went to one of those kids-only places up in Lexington, where the chairs are shaped like rocket ships and fire engines and the kids can watch videos while they get their hair trimmed. Liza was good for the first 30 seconds or so, and then her need for a nap got the best of her and she went all red-faced and screamy for the rest of the cut. The stylist was very good at clipping while Liza whipped her head around as if she was being attacked by a swarm of bees, but I don't think either of them enjoyed the experience. I may have to trim by her ears a little one of these days when she's a little more calm, but it's amazing how much of a difference a half-inch of hair can make. Meanwhile, despite the fact that I think keeping locks of baby hair is creepy, Jason was running around grabbing the clippings and putting them in the thoughtfully supplied plastic bag. Yet another thing for Liza to add to the bonfire once we force this stuff on her when she moves out in 20 years ...