One Man's Trash Is Another Man's ...Well... Trash

Today was the day I've been preparing for for the last three weeks. The afternoon I've been waiting for for seven long years. The moment I couldn't believe was finally here.

It was the time to finally sell all my baby stuff. We. are. officially. done. Not that having my tubes tied about 8 months ago didn't already say that ... but discarding all the stuff I purchased way back when Riley was born was a big step for me.

I spent the entire morning organizing the last bit of items for the sale, though I took a quick break to go pick up my iMac from the computer repair shop. Of course, I was so busy that I never got a chance to even check it out, as once we returned home, we had to start loading the car with all the stuff to the Consulate. My girlfriend's driver came over to help take a load of items with him, and I went there early to start setting up as I knew it would take me an hour to get everything ready. I asked a dear friend to help man my tables that afternoon as I knew I couldn't do it alone ... and thankfully another friend kindly offered to help too. And boy did I need it. In all, I took up five tables with my stuff, and still had baby clothes and items strewn about the lawn. Whew did we have a lot of cr*p.

The sale started at exactly 3 pm, and within mere seconds, my tables were surrounded with a swarm of local employees vying for every nick knack, every food item, every available deal. I priced everything to move, with all our personal goods selling for pennies on the dollar. However, despite how well I marked each and every item, all I heard for the next fifteen minutes was .... "madame, I'll give you __ for this", "madame what discount will you give me", "madame, hold this, maybe I'll buy it later"... blah blah blah... I didn't have enough sets of eyes to watch what everyone was touching, what everyone was looking at, what everyone was walking around with. But I did notice something out of the corner of my eye that looked rather odd. A swarm of insects looked to be surrounding the tables at the far end of the yard sale. Wait a minute, those aren't just insects.

They're Bees. Hundreds, if not, thousands of them. And they're heading towards us.

Within seconds, our end of the lawn was surrounded with this plague of flying four winged creatures. As my friend Sejal said, it was literally the swarm, after the swarm. People weren't quite sure what to do. Many ran when they realized the bees were coming a little too close to their faces. Some just stood there and continued to shop. Others, like me, began squealing like teenage girls and flailing their arms so that the bees stopped landing in their hair. In. my. hair. Nothing we could do persuaded these persistent buggers to leave. In fact, they were now getting worse. While we're still not sure what caused these bees to come out, whether the tables and chairs on the lawn somehow hit an underground hive, or if they were being smoked out of the lot next door to the Consulate, it really didn't matter. What did matter was that people were starting to get stung. Badly. Apparently, the bees really liked the oil the Indians wear in their hair, so they were targeting the scent, with as many as 50 - 100 bees swarming around, and no hint of going away. One of the drivers got stung all over his face. My driver attempted to help, and in the process got stung all over his face too. By this time, I was so crazy that I kept running around my table, trying to shoo the bees away, while still taking notice of who had what in their hands, because for whatever reason, people were still shopping. And then I got stung. And then Sejal got stung. And we were done.

As soon as all of the local employees went inside, the bees began to dissipate and we were able to pack everything up. The yard sale had found another venue inside the Consulate, so all we needed to do was take down our tables, move all our stuff inside, re-set up, and continue where we left off. Twenty minutes later, we were rushing to get everything thrown onto tables and chairs so we could continue to purge. Good thing I spent the last few weeks painstakingly organizing every single box down to each cr*ppy little item, only to literally chuck it in whatever box I could find in that moment, and then slap it wherever there was room in the new venue. I also had to pull new prices out of my a** because of course many as of the stickers came off in the hustle and bustle. Whatevah.

The mood in the room was quite ominous as none of us could believe what happened in the previous 50 minutes. Some people shook their heads. Some people smirked. Me... I couldn't stop cackling. Loudly. All I kept repeating to everyone was, "Seriously? Who is going to believe this?" And then I'd laugh a hearty giggle and shake my head in disbelief. In the meantime, my driver called me and told me he was chased by the bees all the way down the street, and asked if someone could pick him up and bring him to the health unit to tend to his multiple stings. So another friend's driver grabbed him and brought him back. His face was a tad swollen from the stings, and his eyes were red and swollen from crying. Clearly he was a tad shaken up. I felt awful for him.

After a lot of bargaining, a whole lot of saying, "no, you can't have that for that price", and a bit of just giving in, the sale finally ended. After re-packing the unsold items, we were back in the car and ready to head home by 5:30 pm. And by then even Velan was able to laugh about it. Sort of.

In the end, after all was said, stung, and done, I made over $500. And have less than 1/3 of the amount I started with. Thankfully one man's trash...

Stuff I was selling

My five tables at the yard sale

My friend's driver John who was stung multiple times
along with my driver Velan who was trying to help him.
He has 'medicine' on his face to help ease the pain from the stings.

This is all I have left.