When estate sales go bad: a long vent

Two days of craptastic estate sales, which would not normally be cause to make me so cranky but I think those coupled with the wind and heat today, the mess in my house, the baby who is being too needy and the DOG HAIR EVERYWHERE are just combining into a big black cloud over my head.

Yesterday's craptastic estate sale: I signed up to receive emails from estatesales.net and got this notification for a rare Wednesday sale. Go ahead and read the ad and see if you're not drooling like I was. It's okay, I'll wait.

Back? Drooling? Thought you would be. I got a babysitter for Porter (because I knew I'd need two hands at this sale) and arranged for Maren to go home after school with a friend in case I was late. Drove WAY downtown, parked several blocks away, and got there just minutes before the scheduled 2:00 pm opening to find probably 50 or more people already waiting. There was a sign-up list, but it was cut off at 1:45 and the porch was so packed I couldn't have gotten to it anyway. They started letting people in off the list, 10 or so at a time. I finally got in, and the place was a madhouse. Teeny-tiny house, probably built in the 1930s or 40s, no A/C, and PACKED TO THE GILLS with neat old stuff, just like the ad promised. Except that all that stuff had already been snatched up by the people in front of me so I had the pleasure of watching everybody walk around with goodies, while I tried to find anything that might have been overlooked. I found a few things (emphasis on few) and finally went to stand in line. The line was all through the house. One room had a window A/C unit so it was cool in that room, at least.

I waited in line to pay for at least 30 minutes. Only one woman was taking money and apparently she was having long conversations with everybody or something because it took forever. The prices were no bargain, and I didn't even have anything that great, so I'm not sure why I didn't just drop it all and leave. Maybe I felt like I was already so committed that I might as well stay. The woman behind me in line had three huge boxes of GOOD loot. Amazing stuff, the stuff I would have grabbed if she hadn't gotten to it first. The prices were high to me but she is a dealer and so I'm sure she'll mark it up a whole bunch. Glad that at least she was behind me in line instead of in front of me, because I'm sure she had several hundred dollars' worth of merch in those boxes, and I heard her say as I left that she'd left her money in the car. What?

I finally got out of there, ran to my car and cranked the A/C and drove through horrid traffic home to pick up Maren. And the more I've thought about that sale, the more I have realized how NOT FUN it was. Junking should be fun for me, and that wasn't it. I hated seeing everyone get to all the good stuff before I did. That may sound petty, but it's true. There was just not a good vibe in that sale at all. It felt competitive and greedy and ugly and stressful. There were people switching price tags and people being crabby to each other in line and it was just bad, bad, bad.

I had hopes that today's sale would be better. It was closer, and I could take Porter and save the expense of paying another sitter. The ad sounded promising (a pink fridge? yes please!) and I drove over after dropping Maren at school. Whoever writes their ads has a promising career in fiction-writing, at least. There was no vintage clothing--that to me implies a certain amount of coolness. Yesterday's sale had vintage clothing. Cool vintage clothing that I'd wear today if it fit me. Today's sale had the ugliest stuff your grandma has in her closet that she's never thrown away for the past 30 years. There was a ton of fabric, and a cool pink kitchen, but the basement was horridly stinky. I stayed down there for longer than I should have--it was the kind of sale where you think there should have been something neat, if you just kept looking, but sadly there just wasn't. And now I have that stink in my nose and I think I may have to go wash my hair and change my clothes to get rid of it.

I paid for my meager finds, only to go to my car and find A PARKING TICKET. Way to add insult to injury. Apparently the City and County of Denver is making up their budget shortfall by writing parking tickets to people who have the temerity to park 6" further than the curb than the law allows. This was in a residential neighborhood, mind you--with nice wide streets and hardly anybody around. Do you have parking cops in your neighborhood, whipping out their yardsticks and counting infractions in inches? Because the City and County of Denver certainly does. And woe be unto anyone from the surrounding suburbs, who isn't versed in the parking regulations of every single municipality in this huge metro area in which they might find themselves. Because now, today's junk just cost me an extra $25.

So yeah, it isn't always vintage Christmas goodies and old tablecloths. Sometimes it just sucks.