We looked around the apartment and assessed the situation.

The cats were roaming around unsupervised.  Three bookshelves filled to absolute capacity stood at attention, flanked by another entire bookshelf of DVDs.  The CD shelving, housing more than 900 compact discs, whispered mockingly from the living room.

“You have to pack us all up... every last one of us.”  The CDs snickered in unison. 

“We need to pack all this crap up.”  I said to Chris, the panic rising in my throat.  Moving in three weeks.  Not much time to wrangle all our stuff into a UHaul and drive off to the Soon To Be Disclosed Town.  We have a lot of stuff.

The cats meowed in agreement.

“Yard sale.”  Chris said, crossing his arms.

“Yard sale,” I repeated.

We weeded out everything we didn’t need.  Old guitars, the kitchen table, clothes that haven’t been worn in years, Christmas presents that family members gave me and I didn’t have the heart to toss.  Board games, jewelry, picture frames, and an almost complete set of Simpsons characters.  (I had a Sideshow Bob, a Millhouse, Stonecutter Homer, Mr. Plow, The Plow King, and Vacation Smithers, among many others.  Sigh...)  I considered selling an old glucose meter but then decided that donating it would be the best course of action.  A simple phone call to the Providence Journal placed a classified ad that would alert the state as to the sale of our treasures. 

Our garbage?

The alarm went off on Saturday morning at 5:50 am.  Groggy and miserable, we padded out into the kitchen and made a cup of coffee, listening to the rain pour down outside.

The blasted rain.

It poured, my Faithful Readers.  Pouring rain that melted every lime green sign we had placed in Providence. 

We sat in the rain for hours.  No one came to see us.  Chris and I rigged up tarps along the porch to protect us from the rain.  No one came.  He broke out the guitar and sat at the picnic table, singing songs about how no one was coming to buy our stuff.  (My favorite lyrics:  No one wants our stuff.  Not even God wants our stuff...)  I sat on the couch (outside in the rain, mind you) and ate a bowl of oatmeal. 

It looked like we were living on our front porch.

We counted the money squirreled away in the navy blue mug after hours of trying to sell our wares, after we had dragged the unsold items to the curb.

One hundred dollars.

Less the $25.00 to place the classified ad.

Seventy-five dollars?  That will barely put a dent in our moving costs! 

And as we closed up shop for the day, the clouds settled into a dusky pink and the rain stopped falling for the first time in a week. 

Giving us this gorgeous view.