Big Weekend

Earlier this summer, the kids and I invited our neighbors to join us in a neighborhood garage sale. Last weekend we had our sale, and more than 50 homes participated. It was an exhausting weekend, but, collectively, it was worth the effort. All of us were thrilled to get rid of stuff (although many of our things just traded houses right here in our neighborhood), we earned some cash, the kids got business experience selling Pepsi, we met neighbors we didn't know before, and at the end of the weekend our neighborhood donated a trailer truck full of items to the local Association for the Retarded and Cerebral Palsey Thrift Stores (ARC).

Other garage sale fans out there ought to check out this site: http://garagesalefinder.com/. The lady who runs this nation-wide site created a map for our community sale that we then were able to make available in our online advertising on Craigslist. It worked like a charm. Resellers of all kinds came out in force, and largely thanks to them, we all have more room in our garages now. One family even drove here to Denver, all the way from their small Kansas town, just for our sale. They came with a pick-up truck and a list of needed items for their friends and family, and were shopping garage sales instead of department stores.

Our kiddos had so much fun. I told them they could have the money from whatever they sold, so when it came to cleaning out their closets, I had almost no resistance. They each set up a blanket with their things on it, and watching their excitement each time they sold something was almost as much fun as selling my own things. One of the boys bought a Hot Wheels race track from a neighbor for $2.00, and almost immediately resold it for $5.00. This is our version of Junior Achievement, I guess.

I can't believe how quickly the summer is coming to a close. School is right around the corner again. Oh, well...

I have a routine visit with the oncologist next week. Everything still seems to be going well, except for an accumulating list of side effects from the Tamoxifen (my daily chemo pill that's intended to reduce recurrence risk). I'm doing some serious thinking about that medication, and I'll be discussing some of my thoughts with the doctor. I don't expect she'll be very happy with me. But she's a very reasonable doctor and in the past has been open to non-standard approaches.