Amazing how the vultures circle the wagons when stuff is put out for sale

We swore we’d never do it again! It’s too much trouble! It’s a lot of work!

But there we were again gathering the junk we have collected over these past 10 years since our last yard sale.

What were we thinking?

Unfortunately, we are collectors of "stuff," the preferred verbiage for junk.

Getting rid of stuff is almost impossible for us since “we just might need it one day,”or so we delude ourselves into thinking.

Stuff piles higher and higher in our two houses taking space and collecting dust until we finally decide that something has to be done and soon.

For a couple of months, Mom and I started gathering the yard sale items at my house. I have the "location, location, location" you always hear about. We never advertise and are always swamped with shoppers. I am not one who has ever perused yard sales, but Mom has been a yard seller for so long her car automatically turns in and parks when it sees one.

So Mom was the one doing all the pricing and marking to sell our stuff.

She would get up in the morning before work and mark things, put them in the car, go to work and on the way home stop at my house to drop them off. On weekends, she would come up here and mark my "for sale" items. Poor thing was marking in her sleep.

We decided on the first Friday and Saturday of December when people would be looking for Christmas presents. She enlisted two guy friends who helped with the heavy items and built us tables from cement blocks and plywood.

When everything was put out it looked more like a flea market than a yard sale. We had that much stuff.

Thank goodness we also asked a lady friend of ours who is younger than us -- Mom’s 83 and I’m 62 -- to help us with the sale.

Both Mom and I have herniated disks and can’t lift and I have two bad knees so this was not going to be an easy or pain-free adventure.

We started dragging things out as soon as it was getting light outside. Our friends arrived and helped with that just as the swarms began. Not a half hour into the sale we were visited by a policeman since people were parked everywhere and some were partially blocking the road.

From then on the guys tried to direct traffic and park the cars. You’d be surprised how rude some little old ladies can be when they want to shop. My neighbor was worried about her sprinklers and came out to yell at the fellows who were doing the best they could from running over them. People just would not pay attention to them sometimes. At least we had no more police visits for the remainder of the two days.

People were trying to walk off without paying for things, switching tags on items, offering way less than items were marked and all sorts of tricks we had never seen before. You truly had to have eyes in the back of your head to keep from being ripped off.

I think this is a sign of these desperate financial times.

With all the past yard sales we have had, I have never seen the antics that I saw this year. If they had pleaded their case we would have given it to them but they chose to steal it instead. Sad!

That first night after everything was carried in and we were eating dinner, Mom and I asked each other how we ever did this by ourselves before. I know we were younger and our limbs worked better, but this was truly grueling. We are still recovering and have the aftermath messes to clean up yet.

We did well money-wise and sold a ton of stuff, but still had a lot left over, which in the past we donated, but this time we gave them to a friend who we knew could have their own yard sales with our "leftovers" (yes, there was that much) and make some Christmas money for their family of seven.

No matter how much stuff we could get rid of or how much we could make we have vowed once more that we will never do this again.

I Think we can stick to that vow this time or at least until stuff piles high again.