Rummage Sale Day 1

You know how when you go to a planetarium and see a movie about stars, and you feel all overwhelmed and insignificant? And usually that day you've spent walking around the museum and the city, so you feel pretty tired by the time you sit down?

That's a pretty close to how I feel right now.

It makes writing about it somewhat difficult.

I'll just start from the beginning I guess.

I woke up this morning at 6am, got ready to go, and biked over to the field where the rummage sale was already beginning. I arrived at 8am, but plenty of people had beaten me there and had already put a bunch of tarps on the ground for the stuff to go on. Lynne handed me over to the woman managing the field, and I pretty much followed her around the entire day. (It's a good thing we had a lot in common, or else I'm sure she would have gotten sick of me following her like a duck very quickly.)

We spent most of the morning switching between unloading unending truck-fulls of stuff, and unpacking all of the stuff from boxes, just to sort it into more boxes. At lunch there were delicious vegan sandwiches and Newman-O's, so I was happy. It was also nice to sit for a while.

Most of the stuff had been collected this entire year and stored, but some of the stuff was dropped off as a donation today. People came all throughout the day, cars packed full with the far corners of the garage, and in return received a neon-green tax-return slip. Then of course, the volunteers got to sort it all.

Some of the highlights of the day were the animals that stopped by to say hello. There was a sweet weimaraner pit bull mix, and an adorable pomeranian. Plus, there was a greyhound (my favorite breed, and a rescue on top of that). There was even a horse! Also a moth laid her eggs on me.

It turned out that my friend's mom was volunteering, so when she saw me she called up her daughter with orders to come out to the field right away. It was great to see my friend, even though it was just for a little while. Her little brother also came for a while, which was fun because he's only a little kid.

I spent most of the day sorting. Going through boxes and moving stuff from one box to another, finding things that made me laugh, or that confused me. There were more books than anything else, mostly because a guy dropped off a trailer-full that had been in storage for a while. There was also a lot of clothes. So much that the clothes were put in these huge, colorful piles, that required quite a lot of digging to get through. I think this rummage sale has more clothes than any clothing store, and more books than any book store.

I could go on and on about the stuff, all the types and cool things I found, but I would really rather go to sleep. I have to get up at 5am tomorrow.

I didn't leave until 9pm today, which was when we had finally finished unpacking and sorting all the boxes. So after a full day of setup, we get two days to sell it all. It's going to be crazy and exciting and tiring and hot and lots of fun.