Goat? What goat?

Yard sales.  You either love them or hate them, right?

I love and hate them.

No, really, I do.  I love going to yard sales, garage sales, rummage sales, flea markets.  I love digging around in piles of stuff, searching for treasure.  I love finding that unbelievable deal, because someone is sick of his or her own clutter.  I love looking at what one of aunts calls "used crap." 

Seriously, she does.  She also calls antiques used crap.  Several years ago, she, my uncle and my cousin took me to a nearby town known for its antique stores and let me run wild for the day.  My aunt was ever so helpful, too.  She'd point at a store and say, "Oh, there's some more used crap we haven't looked at, over there!" A pip, she is.  An absolute pip.

Anyway.  While I love going to yard sales, I am pretty much sick and freaking tired of putting on yard sales.  Okay, yes, Roommate does do most of the work, but I get dragooned into a boatload of work I did not want to do in the first place.  Which begs the question; has Roommate forgotten what an essentially lazy creature I am?  I am beginning to fear this is the case.

Roommate's heart is in the right place, though, bless her.  The yard sale proceeds go to support breast cancer research and treatment for people who cannot afford care.  Any leftover items at the end of the yard sale is donated to Goodwill or the Salvation Army or Value Village.  And when she heard about shortages in Seattle Food Banks, she added a canned food drive to this sale; anyone who brought a canned food item to the sale to donate would get a free baked good.

Guess who baked the goods?

Roommate was quick to point out that "we" baked the shortbread, the chocolate chip cookies and the four loaves of banana bread the night before, because she HELPED with the baking.  Which is true.  She did help.  She pulled a cookie sheet out of the oven and slid another sheet I'd loaded with unbaked cookies into the oven.  Really, it was tremendous.  Based on this criteria, Roommate's mom chimed in that she, too, helped with the baking, since she pulled out two of the loaves of banana bread.  Now that I think of it, I have no idea why I was even in the kitchen. 

Despite my utter exhaustion afterward, the sale was a success.  Roommate and her mom worked very hard to make it so and I walked around, trying to talk people into buying more used crap than they ever wanted.  And after it was all said and done, the rest of the used crap was donated and is no longer in my basement.  It just doesn't get much better than that.

No, wait.  It does.  The best moment of the whole weekend happened when Roommate's mother made reference to an object that finally broke after a long period of ownership and use.  "It finally gave up the goat," she reported to Roommate.

I stopped unpacking a bin of glassware onto the folding table to turn and stare at her.  "What did it give up?" I asked.

"It gave up the goat," Roommate's mom repeated.  "Haven't you ever heard that saying?  That means it died."

The ten minutes it took me to stop laughing and explain the origin of something giving up the ghost was the absolute best moment of the whole three days.  It almost made the work worth it.

Almost.

Sigh.  It's done.  I'm done in.  I'd better get to bed now, as I feel like I'm about to give up the goat.

Snicker.