Column by Karen Parr-Moody
The toddler crawled across her nursery, a bunny, cat and mouse emblazoned on her behind. Groggy in the early morning, I stared at the print and thought, “If that was our cat, the mouse and the bunny would be dead as a hammer, slumbering in the Great Hereafter on our front steps.”
But they weren’t dead. They were very much alive, twirling in their tutus, performing pastel pirouettes across my daughter’s backside. Such is the life of a cartoon on a Carter’s footed sleeper.
The child turned to me, her snowy blonde hair sticking out like dandelion fluff. Soon we would be in the kitchen where I would cut up hundreds of squares of avocado and mango and she would say, “Uh-oh!” She says this, her newest word, when I cook dinner or breakfast. I think she’s onto something.
Every morning I leap into the roles of mother, sous-chef and administrative assistant. The second I wake up, I worry about Stella’s needs: I make and pack lunch for daycare, pack her diaper bag, make sure her teeth are brushed. Then I run down the list of writing deadlines. Lately, to that list, I have been adding one more chore: Planning a yard sale.
How I loathe this hellish rite of American passage. I have had two yard sales. There was the one at age six in which I sold my dolls, then regretted it for the next 10 years. The other was in New York City, in which I sold hundreds of unused beauty products I had been gifted as a magazine editor.
Here is what I learned from my most recent sale: Yard sales are no fun if you do them alone. They stink without Valium. You will get dusty — very dusty. You will be astonished at how crack-of-dawn early the dreaded early bird shoppers will arrive. I suspect these are the very people who shake the shoulders of robins as they slumber in their nests and scream, “Wake up, little bird! You have some worm catching to do!”
When I hosted a New York City yard sale, I did so with my friend Maria, a native of that fine city. The early bird shoppers arrived 30 minutes early. One — in true New York fashion — had the audacity to request a chair in which to sit as he waited for the sale to commence. This was too much for Maria, who gave him — in true New York fashion — a litany list of exactly why she wasn’t giving him a chair in which to sit. And she did so — in true New York fashion — at the sound level of a Kiss concert.
Maybe it’s my yard sale flashbacks. Maybe it’s all of the aforementioned yard sale nightmares. But lately I dream of dumping my yard sale loot in a ditch. Or, better yet, I could give everything to Goodwill. Or I could operate the sale as one would a Tupperware party, complete with drinks and snacks. Then I would just fling open my closets and yell, “Everything must go!”
Then again, maybe I just need to have the darn yard sale and add a lemonade stand to the mix. And to make sure everyone is happy — especially me — I’ll spike the lemonade with Valium. Sold!
Writer Karen Parr-Moody has been penning her “Delusions of Glamour” column since 2011. It began with daydreams of decorating her fixer-upper house, but recent topics have included child-rearing and balancing home life and work life.