Do you wake up happy everyday? Or do you do what we do–wake up and decide to be happy?

Even though we are retired, weekends are special to us because we don’t go straight to the gym in the mornings. On this particular Saturday, we had two activities planned, and added a few more activities as the day progressed.

When I wrote our first blog post, we thought this might turn into a daily blog; however, we soon realized it would be more realistic to write a weekly blog, or even a “when-we-get-around-to-it” blog. This is because (1) each post takes longer to write, edit, and post than we first anticipated; and (2) we really are crazy busy for a couple of old people!

Activity #1: Coffee

So, on this cool, sunny, fall Georgia morning, we started out the day partaking in one of our favorite multitasking activities, drinking coffee, muddling through emails and Facebook on our phones, and listening to the news. I always hope that Facebook will lead us to interesting things to do, and today the yard sale posts were plentiful. I grabbed screenshots of them as I read them, and when  five of them looked promising, we decided that we would get moving and go check them out.

Activity #2: Yard Sales

Maybe we need a generic term for “yard sales”. I’ve seen them called by several names:

• Yard sales
• Rummage sales
• Garage sales
• Moving sales
• Junk sales
• Estate sales

One sale today was even advertised as “Classy Stuff Sale”. OK, so now I’m curious about other cute ways to advertise yard sales, and I’ve listed some of my favorites from a 2019 blog post by Brandon Gaille, 51 Real Catchy Garage and Yard Sale Slogans:

• A State Sale.
• Bitter Divorce Sale.
• Desperate People Selling Desperate Things.
• Garage Sale. Free Beer.
• Going to Jail Sale.
• Grandpa Finally Died Sale.
• Grodge Sale.
• I Pity the Fool Who Doesn’t Stop.
• My Husband is Making me Sell it Sale.
• My Psycho Grandma’s Garage Sale.
• Our Crap Could Be Your Crap.
• Put Our Junk in Your Trunk Sale.

Do you generally have something in mind to buy when you go to these sales? We actually did today. Aron has found that his little wooden chair in his office was fine when he occasionally sat down at his computer, but NOT so much now that he spends more time building web sites for our new ventures; so, a more comfortable office chair was on his radar. Just yesterday I filled the bird feeders for the first time this season and complained that someone needed to invent a better shepherd’s hook that didn’t bend toward the ground with the weight of the feeders.

With our first yard sale entered into the GPS, we jumped in the truck for our little adventure. We would usually just take our car, but last Tuesday night on our way home from dance class, a big coyote ran in front of us on the interstate, and the car is in the repair shop with $5,000 in damages to the front end.

We always watch for stray yard sale signs when we are out, so for every one sale we had planned to go to, we usually find one or two more. We decided that today we would not just do “drive bys”, but we would actually stop the truck and get out at every sale we saw. You really can’t see from the street what treasures might be hiding.

At about the third stop, we hit pay dirt!  We found an awesome, sturdy office chair with some chew marks on the arms for only $5!!!! Aron found it online for $355 new, and he said he could fix the arms. AND . . . . . . at the same sale, we found a sturdy, tall shepherd’s hook for only $10!!!! So, it’s a good thing we had the truck.

Activity #3: Pot Stickers and Crab Rangoon

At one sale, we noticed a building across the street that looked like either an Asian restaurant or grocery store. When we investigated, it was a nice-looking eating establishment next to a convenience store. Since we had skipped breakfast, 11:15 seemed like a good time for lunch.

We would rate Lieu’s on the Go with two thumbs up!

Since we were “on the go”, we just ordered a couple of appetizers to go, and we were very happy with their clean restaurant (including the restrooms), great service, and freshly-prepared delicious food.

Activity #4: Cheerleaders

Three granddaughters are part of MGA Cheer Extreme which accounted for our main activity of the day. Parents, grandparents, etc. were invited to a free exhibition of competition cheerleading events. We had scheduled our yard sales to end right before the exhibition began.

Let me just say that cheerleading has changed a LOT since I was one in the 1960’s!

Activity #5: Tres Hombres

 Tonight my husband got to show off how much he has learned in all the dance classes we have been taking. Tres Hombres, one of favorite local country/rock bands, was playing at the American Legion in Macon, and some friends invited us to join them there. The band played a lot of two-step and swing songs, but we also used our rumba skills and even tried a waltz!

Summary

Our lives as honeyboomers seem charmed at times. We wake up every day and decide to be happy, then go about the business of making that happen. We sincerely hope that we can inspire others to do the same.