Random story to start: the other morning, in a state of 95% sleep, 5% irritation at the fat cat who came to sit on my hair, I saw a giant spider drop down on his web line (like Tom Cruise- blech!- in Mission Impossible) straight for my head. I bolted up to a sitting position, managing to painfully crack my neck in the process (and sent a startled cat screaming and flying across the room). I gingerly looked in all directions before I realized I was in a different room and there was no spider zip-lining down to my face. Turns out I was dreaming and also slightly crazy and experiencing whiplash. Good Monday Morning, Crazy Pants.
Segue: something about this random start to the day (and end to my weekend) seemed appropriate. Friday and Saturday were my mom's annual garage sale days, where, as usual, we tried to sell a combination of fairly good stuff mixed with horribly bad stuff. There are certain pieces that never sell, so my mom packs them up and brings them out for the next year's sale. While I give her credit for her perseverance, I will not stop making fun of her for trying to sell Christmas Oreo tins or pens that have a bank's name on them.
A garage sale is the perfect opportunity to people watch. All kinds of people come out; those who want to haggle on the 25 cent item, those who ask you if you know of any other, better garage sales, and those who hand you their dirty, used baby wipes and ask you to throw them away. By far, my favorite couple of the day showed up around midday in their pajamas. For a moment we thought the gentleman was wearing the snowflake pants I was selling for 10 cents, but no, his were a slightly different color. He had paired them with some stunning purple shoes. The biggest impact came when he turned around to look at the Shape-Up shoes; he had a trail of toilet paper hanging out of the back of his pants. I didn’t think this could happen to people in real life. I was staring and trying to work out the whys and hows of a mistake like this. (maybe wiped and threw it in his pants instead of the toilet?) In the end, as he walked away I had come up with nothing since the paper looked mostly unused.
The day got progressively better when I went to run an errand with my sister. She had somehow agreed to pick up a friend’s dog from the groomers and deliver him back home. The hitch was that this dog hated her and has tried to maul her regularly. I’ll let you sit there and imagine a fight scene from Turner and Hooch for a while before I tell you that her nemesis was a white puff mini dog – like a bichon frise or some nonsense like that. And Bingo was his name-o. When the groomer brought him out, he was wearing a black muzzle that strapped all the way around his head, like a dog version of Hannibal Lecter. My sister apologized for her ninnyness and then asked me to put him in the car; she feared he would suddenly turn on her and threaten to eat her liver through his mask. He wanted to sit up front with the girls and kept trying to end it all by shoving his head through the crack of window I gave him until he couldn't breathe anymore. Since I wasn’t about to be responsible for a dead, muzzled dog, I saved him over and over. All the way across town the battle continued (while my sister darted anxious glances at Bingo) until we were able to safely deliver him to his house. I removed the leash and muzzle in his cage, and miraculously he didn’t gore my hands. I wish very much that I would have photographed this ferocious beast. I'm going to include a few stock photos as an illustration.
Bingo looked something like this... maybe he was a bit more poodley.
The muzzle looked like this, but on a different kind of dog.
The end result felt something like this.
The rest of the day was mostly uneventful; there were no dog attacks, no more toilet paper pants… more awesome people came and bought our junk, my mom yanked out my son’s hanging front tooth, giving him an impressive lisp.
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