Yard Sales and Cat Vomit

Managed to pull myself away from the office early on Friday to drive over to my mom’s on Friday afternoon.

She and my grandmother had a yard sale on Saturday morning, and I went over to help out and visit with them for a bit. We were up at five in the morning to set up and were surprised to find a couple parked out in front of my grandmother’s house by five-thirty. This ticked my off a bit, because it stressed out Grandma. She actually wondered aloud if we should ask them in for coffee and doughnuts.

My mom’s response to that suggestion: “Absolutely not.”

Can I tell you how many times I'd gotten that same response to my suggestions while I was growing up?.. The funny part is, the same words flashed through my mind right before they came out of mom's mouth. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree!


Grandma is so cute. She made up little signs with sayings like: “Deal or no deal?” and “Cash from my attic” and “Let’s haggle.” She’d written these sayings on white paper she’d cut out with crimping scissors and glued them onto red paper, which she then taped to all the tables. Then she put on a little visor and sat down at a table in the breezeway with the cashbox and an inventory list. How adorable is that?

By noon, it was almost a hundred degrees and we were packing up the car to deliver anything that didn’t sell to drop off at the local charity. It took two trips and a stop at the local diner for lunch, but we were back at my mother’s by three-thirty, stinky and exhausted.

I had meant to head home then, since Boy had been sending me text messages since I’d left and was missing his mama. He’d had us all giggling about mid-morning with a text that read: “The cat threw up again. Tonight she dines in Hell.” So, I’d figured I should get home to diffuse that situation, if nothing else.

With clouds in the distance, though, my mom pointed out that I’d be driving into the storm, so she popped in a movie on the television in the living room and I took a nap on the couch while outside the windows the bright sun turned to mist and the Atlantic Ocean metamorphosed from rolling glass to churning foam.


My mom’s off to Greece this week to visit my dad. Some stipulation with his visa requires that he leave Jerusalem for a period of time before returning to work. He goes to these cool places for a couple of days, and, when she can, my mom goes to visit with him. Tough life, huh?

I had brought her a belated birthday gift and was thrilled that she really seemed to like the earrings I’d gotten for her. She always brings us girls jewelry featuring our birthstones, so I’d returned the sentiment with a pair of ruby earrings. It’s so hard to know what to get for people anymore, isn’t it? Most people will just buy what they want when they want it, and your job as gift giver is reduced to finding the one thing that they didn't know they wanted and is least likely to end up in a yard sale.


So, I’m home now and back to being Mom myself. Dog’s Cat dined in my kitchen last night, though judging from the mountain of dishes I found in my sink when I finally made it home last night at eight, this is only a short step up from Hell. Dog won’t leave my side, but Boy has stopped blowing up my phone. All is quiet.

And there is comfort in this rhythm I’ve found in the quiet.

When I think about the week coming up, I know the quiet will be lost. I know life and work and friends will push in. But for today, I’ll hit ignore on my phone when it rings and putter in the garden and wash my windows so that the sun shines though them and leaves patches of light on the floor for Dog’s Cat to nap in between bouts of regurgitation.