The Ugliest Thing at the Garage Sale Award Goes To:

Margot's plastic sunflowers.


 

We made about five-hundred bucks. On garbage. We spent the book sales money on Bloody Marys. Right away. Early morning, as usual, was best. The CD vulture guy was there, like always, before we were half set up. TV's flew off the grass shelves. The old turntable we've been keeping wrapped in a pillow case up in termite dropping land high in the garage, gone. The endless dishes and mismatched glasses and dog gates and boombox and clothing and a dog that dances when you plug your ipod into him and books and CD's (and even some of my mixed tapes from 1993-lesbian couple cooing over the hilarity), the baked goods by Anne, Karen's place mats in brown wonder, Bradford's candlesticks and stylish shoes, Margot's tiny whore house lamps, very smelly soap, canvas, pictures, picture frames, baskets, flower pots, a teddy bear, throw pillows for the common man, a poker table, Adam's Z gallery table lamp attempting an ode to the treble Clef, Sarah's grand dishware, the clock radio, the little toys and sippy straws and pencil sharpeners and umbrellas and pedestal sink and coffee tables and book shelves and nine-ton black office file cabinets and jewelery, the finger eating circular saw, the vases, the rollerblades, the whole mess, almost.


By the end of the day, we were posting on Craig's List and LAFreecycle, "Come and take anything you want for free!" (Thank goodness we did or that huge orange laminate book shelf with the low convenient cabinet might have never left, thankfully hauled off on the roof of a van)---So there we were surrounded by our for-free stuff and the people rummaging through the remains (like anorexic Dark Lady) were being choosy, picking things up and replacing them on the table in revulsion. The quote of the day, from Bradford, which will ring in my ears and make me laugh every day until the next one in 2010: "For years, we have been living with all this stuff we can't even give away at the garage sale."

There may have been one thing more repulsive than Margot's sun flowers. And that was probably the torquoise kidney shaped plastic hospital receptacle that is used to hold small unwanted body parts during a procedure. It was mine. I ended up putting it in the blue recyling can.