PHEW!

It's over. Hours and hours of sitting in a hot garage (I made Joe do it...heheheh) and haggling with people over prices with no number on the left side of the decimal point is OVER! We made it through the garage sale and we're only left with a small pile of unsold stuff that I will gladly call the nearest charitable group so they can toodle on over and get it. We didn't do too bad...considering it was Oktoberfest weekend and there were no less than 30 or 40 other garage sales in town. You think I'm kidding? I'm telling you, the amount of stuff on card tables in front yards could have been seen from SPACE! Every street, signs, balloons, piles of stuff. So...I was happy there were so many people with so much time on their hands to go to every one they encountered. Me...I wouldn't have gone to ONE. Not even MINE if I hadn't lived here! But yesterday we counted up all the cash and pronounced it a certified success. My mother suggested that we do it again next year and I told her I'd rather slam my head in a car door. She's already got stuff she's going to send down....thank God I work for a neurosurgeon.

So the lighted Oktoberfest parade was good. I had great glow bracelets filled with nuclear pink, green, orange and blue goo that glows after you snap the bracelet and shake it. I say I buy them for Emma, but they are really for ME because I think they are so freaking cool. I wore several. Emma's kept falling off, so I wore hers too. She was pelted with candy and I don't think she really understood why the air was filled with Frootsie Rolls and Dum-Dums, but she went along with it and scuttled around like the other kids picking up candy from the streets. We went up town to the carnival afterwards and waited in line with 2 million...okay it was maybe 12..people for tickets to rides...really it was very crowded. I got her onto the merry-go-round and she was all grins until that horse started moving...about half way through she turned to me and said...with a green face.."This needs to stop NOW". I could see that pukage was around the corner. I pointed to another little girl she knew and said "LOOK! Lauren is having FUN". Emma looked doubtfully at Lauren, giggled a little and then gave me that green look again. I kept telling her the horses were slowing down (they weren't...and it was the fastest damn merry go round I've ever BEEN on). Finally, wonderfully, the ride came to an end. Another parent with a grey face looked over at me and said "man...that was LONG". SO..on to the pick a duck game...won two unicorns...one purple, one blue...all was well in her world. Glow bracelets, puking averted, cheap stuffed toys, mommy on one side, daddy on the other...life was perfect.