As Is

On Saturday our garage sale was a washout. We had to hold it anyway because we had signed up...and paid...to be included in the Town-wide Tag Sale announced in all the papers. It was apparently rain or shine. We decided to extend it to Sunday, which dawned cool and sunny; a brisk, early fall day. I took the first shift at 8am since I had been AWOL at my "day job" the day before. I pulled on my thick gray sweater and grabbed a mug of pumpkin spice coffee, my phone (of course) and stepped outside to the garage. I was on the job.  After a week of all kinds of more demanding work; day job, peddling my book, babysitting my grandson, this was a job I could handle. A responsibility with no responsibility, and it suited me just fine. I was "As Is." 

That's how we were selling all our stuff: As is. Meaning of course that we weren't going to repair the VCR or buy a lampshade for the brass floor lamp. I did go around with a roll of paper towels and a bottle of Windex to symbolically clean some of the really grimy stuff. The seatbelts on Luca's old stroller seat ("It's a travel system!" insisted Annie) had some unidentifiable schmutz on them, but it wiped away pretty easily. The bed tray needed two paper towels and several spritzes of cleaner, but the books looked just like almost-new with one swift pass. Here it is folks: As is. We took care of it as well as we could, but now we offer it for your consideration. Like it or not, take it or leave it. Well, buy it or leave it. 

It's kind of like how I think about myself these days. As is. This is how I am folks; take me or leave me. When I went out to the garage it occured to me that I should make more signs or rearrange the 400 shovels and rakes we have propped up against the garage wall. As I looked around I saw 10 different areas that needed 20 different fixes, all of which would require my attention, endurance and coordination. I took note of all the plastic crates that still needed to be sorted out and designated to yet another storage area or the trash and I acknowledged (to myself) that many of the projects I had started over the years now sit in various forms of completion in this very garage. It was a Sunday, I was up early and I had the day in front of me. There were dozens of things I could do. 

Instead, I did just one. I sat down in a chair (for sale), enjoyed my pumpkin spice coffee and checked my Words with Friends games. I watched nobody pull up to buy anything and I smiled as a couple of squirrels tumbled out of the long-neglected garden on the side of the driveway and scurry across the street, where they ended up yelling at us for the rest of the day for encroaching on their territory.  The rest of the family roamed in and out of the house throughout the morning; Annie put up more signs for our sale and managed the cash box, Luca set up his cookie and cider stand and Angelo and Tony started the fall clean up in the backyard. The sun moved around the house to shine a little more directly on the driveway, so I gave up the sweater for sunshine and found a different chair and I continued to be as is into the afternoon.

We made a couple of sales and then we packed it in for the day. There's only so much selling off of one's household that can be done in one weekend. (So we went to Target afterwards to buy more stuff.) I enjoyed selling off some of our unused furniture and household goods, but the best thing that happened was having that time to myself where I didn't feel beholden to some demanding task that only exists in my own sense of responsibility. I was able to direct my sense of responsibility to take a break for once and just be in the moment of the day. I'll be honest, it was a lot of moments, but being as is was nice for a change.