Category: Family

Posting my One Photo An Hour a bit late, as usual. I decided to start extra early that morning, at 1am, since I was up anyway:

1:00am – Feeding Alaethia and reading a book (currently Sushi for Beginners by Marian Keyes). This is the usual time Alaethia falls asleep.

7:00am – Time to start the day. Aly has a bottle and once she’s asleep and in bed I get ready to iron and make Mario’s breakfast and get the boys some cereal.

8:00am – Browsing Target.com to look for a new TV table. We need more space in our tiny living room and wanted to get rid of our 6-year-old, huge entertainment center.

9:00am – My breakfast: French Vanilla Shredded Wheat and some coffee.

10:00am – Looking for something to wear so we can leave already.

11:00am – At the bank to deposit all the coins from the yard sale.

12:00pm – Arriving at the Goodwill where John pointed out that the sign said “InsuranceClams” instead of Claims!

Didn’t have a very successful thrifting day this time. Got a Making Memories album with accessories (brads, flowers, metal embellishments, etc.) for $6.50, some Rat treats for Mario’s rats ($.99), a brand-new box of 64 Crayola crayons for the boys ($.99), a cute crackled glass vase ($.50), and some thank you cards ($.27). Mom got the boys a HUGE case of sidewalk chalk for $2.00!

1:00pm – Our next stop was the mall. I’m leaving a note to my dear neighbor in the parking lot, who parked ridiculously close to my parking space. I took a picture of their license plate just in case they hit my door. I’ve learned my lesson–I got a huge dent in my door the last time some bozo parked super close to me at the mall. The first and only casualty my Equinox has suffered! And it wasn’t even my fault–that’s what gets to me.

2:00pm – When we were leaving JC Penny (where I bought some cute capris for $10.81 with an awesome coupon I had!) we stalked Spiderman per the children’s request. He was nice enough to pose with them to Jaylen’s delight.

3:00pm – Having some Taco Bell since we were starving by now. Since Mario works nearby, I was picking a snack up for him, too.

4:00pm – Saying goodbye to the Equinox as we’re leaving in Mario’s Neon. My battery died for some weird reason, after only having the truck for a year. Thank GOD we were close by to Mario’s work. He came over to check the car but the jumper didn’t work. I walked over to his work and picked up his car. He’d go over with his co-workers later to check out the car. We were going to drop some stuff off to Gramma but totally forgot everything in the truck :(.

5:00pm – Leaving Target with our new TV table :). This is John struggling with the incredibly heavy box.

6:00pm – We finally get home and Jorge and Mary are at the carport trying to get the PPV channel to work since we’d all pitched in for the fight. Jorge brought over his 32″ TV but since the box wouldn’t cooperate on that TV we had to bring out our little 27″ LOL.

7:00pm – I could have sworn I took a 7 o’clock picture, but I couldn’t find it on my camera.

8:00pm – I walked into the boys’ room to check up on them and the room was a disaster. To their disappointment I made them start cleaning up ASAP.

9:00pm – Watching the pre-big-fights and eating and holding Alaethia.

10:00pm – Alaethia fell asleep after having a bottle. She slept from 10pm to 7am the next morning! First, and so far only, time she’s done that!

11:00pm – Watching the fight. VERY disappointed with the outcome!

You know global warming’s taking it’s toll on the world when New Mexico is ‘yellow’ (65°) and Texas is Flaming Hot Cheetos ‘red’ (88°) on the temperature map on the news. There’s yet another red tornado watch box to the North West of us.

I started this blog yesterday, May 8th sometime in the evening. Obviously I never got a chance to finish it. Now that I’m freshly showered, drank some nice warm chamomille tea to soothe my throat (I’ve got an annoying sore throat), and have Mario occupied with dinner (a sandwich) I’ll try and post as much as possible. I’m going to do this in “chunks” of days since I probably won’t cover everything tonight.

I’ll start from Thursday. The night I last posted we were hurled by a thunderstorm. A bad one. I didn’t believe we were going to get much of a storm, since we hardly ever do when they’re announced on Channel 4. Well, that day I’d been watching the Weather Channel and they mentioned “strong, severe thunderstorms and 40% chance of rain”.

Nah, I thought to myself. Nature wouldn’t do that to me. Not the night before my Yard Sale. Not when all the stuff I’m selling is already outside in nice organized boxes!

Nature hates me. It rained so hard and it was over as fast as it started. Most of my crap was outside, drenched.

I woke up in a mood the next morning. I didn’t sleep much; if I recall correctly I think I slept a total of 3 hours and it wasn’t because of Alaethia. And not only was a lot of my stuff wet (though, thankfully, not as much as I thought would be) but Mario and I got lazy and didn’t work on the signs the night before, nor had I put the neon-colored price tags on any of the merchandise. The kids were in a fairly good mood, though I did have to get after them a few times. Once they were off to Elda’s to leave to school, I started getting everything that was inside the house outside, and woke Mario up to at least help me set up the tables.

Mom came over and watched Aly for me while I waited for Mario. He never woke up. When he finally did, he said he was already late (“Why didn’t you wake me up early?” Can you believe him!?) and couldn’t help, sorry. I could have gouged his eyes out. I ended up having to take down the huge, heavy wooden table down all by myself and had to move it with Mom’s help. I am so grateful Mom was there to help. I couldn’t have done it all on my own, especially with Alaethia. She slept a good long time that morning, but still, we had to keep an eye on her so I did most of the work myself after the tables were set up since Mom was watching her. Noelia woke up about half an hour later and helped me out a lot. Thank goodness she’s very organized–she helped me put things into piles and helped me keep focused. I was so stressed I couldn’t think straight.

I put up signs at all the “main” corners, which made a total of 3 signs. If I’d thought it out better, I would have put signs up at stores, the City Hall announcement board and the post office, but nooo, I didn’t think it through. I didn’t plan much, even though it felt all I was doing last week was for the darn Yard Sale.

People started arriving even before we got the tables fully ready. My good friend Karina from our middle school days came over with her mom and took a LOT of stuff off my hands. The people who usually come to our yard sales came by and were impressed by how much stuff we’d accumulated since the last time we had a yard sale, which was about 3 years ago. The weather was merciful too, thank goodness. It was breezy and overcast until around 3 o’clock. Then it got a bit warm but not to the point where we couldn’t stand it. Jaylen was such a good boy that whole day. He found (yes, found) a brand-new “Dig Out Dino” set Mary had given him about a year ago. It’s a block of clay where you dig out and gently brush away clay from dinosaur fossils. He was so proud that he found all the pieces and had Jorge help him put it together. When Eenan got home from school he went straight into the house to do homework and then played video games. All my babies were well-behaved :).

Even though we were selling everything super cheap and didn’t get to take everything we were selling out, we made pretty good money. Mom didn’t have much stuff to sell, but even she made some bucks. The only bad things about the day was 1) the two ladies (I remember one was pregnant) that came by with a little boy who stole a huge Ziploc full of Spiderman toys and one of dinosaurs. So RUDE. I mean, c’mon. The bags were a dollar each for a huge amount of GOOD toys! The vintage Spiderman toys that I was so opposed to selling in the first place were in there!

And 2) Two of the kittens died. One overnight and the other in the afternoon after I got home from picking up Jaylen. I felt guilty all day thinking I may have run him over, because he was fine before I left, but I don’t think I could have run him over. I would have run over the other one too, because they were always together and slept on top of eachother. Poor things :(. John and I think it’s something genetic having to do with Brushka.

Jorge and Big Mario were outside with us (Mom, Alaethia and I) during the yard sale, so that was cool. We had company. The part I hate about Yard Sales is having to clean up afterwards, after you’re already tired and just want to shower and lay down! Thankfully Jorge and John helped :).

I was so thrilled that Mario was going to be home the next day (Friday) but nope, he had to go in to work since he had a huge system he was working on. I was grumpy all over again. It was easier taking everything out this time since everything was already laid out on the tables. Noelia came out to help again and we made sure to bring ALL the stuff that we didn’t take out the day before. I didn’t sell as much as I would have liked, but we did do well again. What I don’t like about Yard Sales is the people who come to you and ask you to drop the prices even more. That happened several times. A dollar was too much for some of those people!

Noelia, Mom, Alaethia and I sat outside on the front porch (with the fan this time!) and just chit-chatted during breaks. Mario called around 1pm and said he was coming home. Yay! He and Jaylen went to pick up McDonald’s for everyone, which was awesome because I was starting to shake and wouldn’t have had enough down-time to make something to eat. After Noelia left to work the rest of us sat outside and then Elda and Jorge arrived. Jorge ran over a box of toys with his truck. I jokingly told him to pay up–$50 LOL. He said he’d trade his labor (helping me put stuff away) for the cash he owed for the toys :P.

When the day was over we put all the clothes and toys that were left away. Next came the task of separating stuff for thrift shops and giving the clothes to the needy. I felt so lazy though. I was so thrilled that once the Yard Sale was over I could just relax and stress only about normal, everyday things, but nope. Next came worrying about where everything was going to go and getting the rest of the house looking decent. I still had boxes laying all over the place and piles of laundry to fold and put away and dishes to wash that I hadn’t had a chance to do because of the yard sale.

The next day was Saturday, which was the next One Photo An Hour day. I’ll get that, and the days after that, typed up tomorrow. I’m so tired. I hope Aly feels like going to bed now. She’s all hyped from the movie Mario’s watching (he’s sitting on the couch with her while I type this up). She’s so cute. She’s recently started trying to sit up, laughs and squeals (and squaks LOL) all day long. I love how she flutters her big eyes when she’s “holding conversation” with you. She’s also been sleeping in her crib for a little over a week now, which is a Godsend since I’m sick with Jaylen’s leftover cold and don’t want to get her sick.

I feel accomplished. I did good today. I deserve some ice cream. Too bad I already had some :(.