Countdown to Life #7: 20 days to go

All is a frenzy of activity here.

Today we did The Dreaded Yard Sale in the sweltering summer heat.

Man, do I hate yard sales. There’s just something inherently undignified about selling off years’ worth of hard-collected crapola for pennies on the dollar. It’s not even so much the crap I mind losing, it's all that return on investment I’ll never see...

And it’s worse now that we have a kid, because suddenly there is sentimental value attached to even the most patently worthless shit. A lot of the stuff we got rid of this time was baby clothes. And every piece that went out, I remembered a picture of him wearing it. Or a day he was wearing it that we did something special.

His large plastic slide that was so intimidating to him when it first arrived, he summited with a spring today, just before somebody walked off with it on their shoulder.

Fortunately there’s always the professional hagglers to keep me from wallowing in melancholy. I hate those guys. I would rather throw something away, donate it or hang onto it for the rest of my life than sell it to someone who is trying to rip me off for sport. One joker waved four CDs at me—three of them still in original store plastic wrap and all priced at 50 cents. Among them were Leonard Cohen Live, Johnny Cash at San Quentin, a Phil Ochs best-of collection and something else—and this bastard goes, “I’ll give you a buck for all four.” Then I caught him studying my reaction, so I gave him something to think about later, after he got home. I calmly explained who the artists were and that his offer was an insult to them and that for him, those four 50¢ CDs were going to be $5. He passed.

Do not come to my yard sale and disrespect Johnny Cash and Leonard Cohen.

We also failed to sell The Boy’s My Parents Are Big Gay Liberals t-shirt. It’s a shame he ever grew out of it because he wore it proudly here in this big, gay, liberal town.

Tomorrow is the birthday party in the park. Temperature should hit triple-digits, but The Last Boy Scout and his family became available at the last minute, so The Missus should have plenty of help in seeing to it that I keep myself out of trouble and don’t ruin the day for our son.

His day care inamorata is expected, and apparently they ran into each other in the park today and the old spark is still there. Should be tragically heart-breaking but it promises to make for good picture-taking.