The Yard Sale took a higher toll on my emotional state than I expected. (For any of you who don’t know me, my family usually had one or two big yardsales each Spring, and I decided to do one this Fall to try to get rid of clutter before I sell the house, and to make money to help me pay the mortgage meanwhile).

I knew I would be selling a lot of memories of my former life to strangers. But I also had to tell the story of the divorce to neighbors and interact with friends of my ex-wife. Memories of my former family had begun to fade due to a lack of updates from them, but from one friend, I found out that they had moved to [***non-specific location censored by ex-wife***] which was depressing.

Some of the memories that were sold this weekend included 7 Garfield DVDs and 20 books. I grew up with the cartoon cat in the 80’s, and had gotten my daughter interested in him as well. Together as a family we watched the Garfield Halloween Special every Halloween Night; the same for Thanksgiving and Christmas, as I had done as a child. Garfield is timeless however and today I passed that torch on to a younger generation.

It’s hard to sell glass and flowers at yard sales, especially in this town and this economy. That stuff always goes slow and there is quite a bit of it left over. If people won’t buy it for 50 cents though, on Saturday afternoon I put it out at the end of the driveway with a “FREE” sign.

Such was the case with a “Happy 8th Anniversary” glass and metal photo frame that had previously contained a photo from our wedding day. I paid $90 for the custom frame and inscription at “Things Remembered” at the mall.

A young hillbilly couple made off with that item, while an older Chinese lady picked at the plastic flowers from my wife’s wedding bouquet and sauntered off with my step-daughter’s tiny wedding flower basket with tiny pink flowers inside. Others took various glass candle holders and nicknacs that my ex-family had previously left behind in a depressing pile in my stepdaughter’s room.

By the end of the day, some small items were not even good enough for the vultures that swooped into the “FREE” pile and I had to pile them into a black plastic bag, pinching off the light for these memories for the final time.