Hey, Y'all!

Countdown to BlogHer '10: The Yard Sale

The yard sale was a success!  Before I tell you about the end results, though, let me go back a few days.  I dove head-first into our spare room, which was full of old toys, outgrown clothes and stuff we don't use any more.  During Dean's nap on Thursday, Marcus and I attacked our big storage closet and collected NINETEEN boxes worth of stuff for me to sell.  The closet is now half-empty and SO orgnaized. You can even open the door without fear of death!  Is miracle!  Anywho, I had myself a pricing and sorting party on Friday.  Here are some things I did to make my yard sale easier:

GENERAL PRICING    Instead of pricing each and every t-shirt and onesie with a pink sticker, I separated single items (meaning t-shirts, pants and onesies that weren't part of an outfit) into boxes and labeled each box according to size. Each item in those boxes cost a quarter.  This saved me the hassel of trying to figure out which shirt was worth 25 cents more than the other shirts when, let's be honest--in the end, someone was going to offer me a quarter and I was going to take it.  This also saved me from having to use the calculator too much. I could just glance, see that these items weren't on hangers, and count up how many quarters these people owed me.  I did hang a clothesline between 2 trees, where I hung nice outfits  and a couple of Halloween costumes, which cost between 50 cents and $2.

I made 2 boxes of books, one for paperbacks, another for hardcover. Each box had a general price.  One of our students was helping me collect money, so this made it easier for us to be consistent.  The fact that most of my stuff cost a quarter made it harder for folks to haggle.

I also did a bargain bin.  It contained bibs, tiny baby hats, a few rattles and other small toys and some baby socks.  Anything from that bin was 2 for 25 cents.  WHAT A DEAL!

SELLING IN BULK  I had already decided that I'd cut people a deal if they wanted to buy a lot of items.  One lady asked how much I'd charge for a big box of baby PJ's. She scored about 20 sets of PJ's in various sizes for 5 bucks. She also left me her number so that after I'd finished, I could call her.  She came back and bought every stitch of clothing I had left for her grandchild, who will be born in December.  My neighbor came over and bought a tricycle, a ride-on zebra and an entire box of 3-9 month clothes for one! low! price!  Good for them, good for me.

NOBODY BULLIES JEN  I had my fair share of early-birds, even though my signs and ads all asked people NOT to come early. I had just started to bring things outside around 7:05 when an older couple drove up in a truck.  Not only did they insist on standing directly between the box I was unpacking and the table I was trying to set up, they also commented on the price of every single item I pulled out.  I should have taken the advice of an article I read and asked them for a $5 convenience fee for letting them shop early.  I gave the woman a pretty nice vase for a dollar just to make her go away. 

Our baby swing was a constant conversation topic throughout the day.  I've already received what I consider to be an excellent offer from a consignment shop, but I figured why not go ahead and try to sell it at the yard sale.  One man offered me $10 for it so he could sell it for $15. Um, dude, little tip?  Don't admit you're gonna re-sell it for more!  One lady plopped her baby in it while she shopped.  At the end of the day, it was one of the only items that came back inside, but I'll take it to the consignment shop this week.

I only had one really sketchy thing go down, which was a lady switching price tags. I had just talked with her about whether or not she wanted to buy the tricycle, which she decided to pass on for now.  Then she went over to the table, hovered with her back to me for a bit, then came over with 2 items bearing a $1 price sticker.  I remember pricing these items at $3. (2 really nice, brand new things still in the original packages)   I remember because Marcus and I discussed the price AND I poked around on eBay to see what similar items were going for on there. I said to the woman," Ma'am, these were priced at $3."  She said, "No, $1, see?" and pointed out the price sticker, which was barely attached to the package.  I said, "No,"  and pointed to the half-torn sticker on the other side, then looked on the table to find the peeled-off $3 sticker sitting there.  I said, "It's $3 if you want to buy it."  Then she pretended not to speak English, which was especially annoying, given our previous 5 minute conversation, which was in perfect English. In the end, she gave me $3 for the items.

One woman brought her 3 kids, who were wild from the minute they got out of the car. The toddler, who I'd guess to be almost 2, managed to destroy my clothesline, unpack every single paperback book, knock over the tricycle and throw toys into my neighbor's yard.  She kept throwing one hard plastic toy onto the driveway and I finally had to go over and tell her mom that she needed to pay for that item if her daughter was going to play with it like that. It was like she remembered right then that she had brought her children, and she began to yell at her son, who was trying to get into my car.  She ended up buying the toy plus all the maternity shorts I had for sale.

IN GOOD COMPANY Like I said, one of our students came and helped me run things, which was great. It gave me another set of eyes and someone to check my math. Dean and I made muffins Friday night, so we sat and talked and had snacks between customers.  Marcus stayed inside with Dean, who was NOT happy that his Mama was outside for most of the day.  The little black curlydog from down the street came over about an hour after we started and stayed for the entirety of our sale.  She sat on top of the ice chest and wooed people with her sweet face. One woman, whose sister was shopping, got out of the car just to pet the dog and ended up buying $15 worth of stuff.  Once my assistant left, curlydog sat in the spare chair next to me.  She was a great companion, except for the time she jumped into a customer's van and I had to go fetch her.

In the end, I'm thrilled with how I did.  Monetarily, I ended up with more than double my goal, which will make for plenty of spending money for BlogHer.  The fact that my house is free of so much clutter is gravy. Delicious, greasy, lump-free gravy.

Budget, Schmudget

Talking about money makes me squinchy.  When I was single, balancing my checkbook stressed me out as much as an algebra test used to in high school.  Once Marcus came along and introduced me to online banking, things got easier. Where our money's concerned, two heads really are better than one.

Which leads us to our current state of financial craziness--we are about to buy a car.  A truck, to be more accurate.  Marcus's beloved El Diablo tuckered out on I-65 in May, so we've been a one-car family for almost 2 months. Honestly, if it had to happen, it was the best timing ever.  It's summer, I'm not working, Marcus has very few things that actually require him to go into his office at the University these days (he's not teaching in the summer session, much to his chagrin), and we pretty much do everything together, so having one car is fine right now. However, Marcus is in a show in Birmingham later this summer and will need to be gone several evenings a week for rehearsal.  Dean and I don't want to be home-bound, plus we'll need 2 cars once school starts back in the fall.  Marcus has been searching for weeks and has finally found a good truck to buy. (knock wood)  This means we'll soon have a car payment, something we've never had as a married couple.  My car was paid for when we got married, then we bought his dad's old car with cash when my car was totalled.  El Diablo was a 1988 model (translation: Not Expensive) and we bought her with cash, too.

Now here comes the fun part--I'm not working (that I know of) in the fall either. This isn't a surprise--we knew I wouldn't have a show at the Shakespeare Festival and we knew in March that I wouldn't be teaching at Montevallo in the fall.  We socked money away from my last job to pay for Dean's school in the fall and we paid off our one credit card. These two things mean we'll have the cash to pay our truck payments. YAY. The fact that I'm not working, however, means we will have to watch our trips to the Bass Pro Shop, MARCUS  and breakfasts at Chick-Fil-A, JEN and get potty trained already, DEAN monthly spending a bit closer.  Here are some things we've discussed:

*Grocery budgets.  We usually shop on Sunday or Monday for the week.  I try to do menu plans for dinner and breakfast and lunch are usually inexpensive. We are going to get a bit stricter about our food budgets, though.  We'll figure out exactly how much we want and need to spend on food, keeping in mind that we are foodies and enjoy eating good things like fresh produce.  I feel lucky that Dean's such a good eater and I'm not willing to compromise on food. We like to cook, it's something we do together and the fact that I need to watch my salt and cholesterol means we should try to prepare our own meals from scratch so that we know exactly what is in them.  I'd rather forego a new t-shirt or skip the dollar spot at Target for a couple of weeks than stop buying good food. Things we WILL sacrifice include coffee cakes from the Publix bakery, random donut purchases and candy, none of which we need anyway and half of which usually get tossed.  I'll continue clipping coupons and shopping store specials and I'll also buy things in bulk whenever I can, though our incredibly crappy cabinets make it hard to stock up on too much at one time.

*Entertainment.  We cancelled our Netflix months ago because we just weren't using it. Our cable package includes HBO and Cinemax, as well as cheap movies on demand, which I think we've used one time.  We are usually so behind on our tv shows that we don't really have time to watch movies.  If we're out of shows on the DVR, we turn on VH1 Classic.  Marcus actually tapes the one-hit wonders show. He got mad at me last week because I deleted the one featuing "In A Big Country."  But I digress. 

*Date night.  In a nutshell, Marcus and I very, VERY rarely get a date night.  Instead, we do lunch dates.  When Dean's at school, we meet for lunch once a week at our favorite Montevallo restaurant.  This saves us about $80 in the long run if you consider what we would pay for a sitter, gas, dinner and a movie.  When we do have sitters, we usually do it when one of our students has BEGGED for time with Dean and we usually pay them with free use of our washer/dryer for the night and a crockpot full of food.  It's a pretty sweet deal.

*Extras.  We never use the internet on our phones (I know, we're SOOO 20th century), so we're ditching it.  That will save us nearly $50 a month.  No, we don't have iPhones or Blackberries.  We both pretty much live tethered to our laptops, though, if that helps your opinion of us.  We also mow our own lawn, do a lot of our own home repairs (not always well, but we try) and try to stretch our dollars as far as possible on things like cleaning supplies, paper products and other miscellaneous household goods.  I buy things like toilet paper and paper towels on sale and with coupons, so it's rare that I pay over $5 for big packs of either.  We currently have a 12 pack of TP in our linen closet that I got for $3.25.  I really like figuring out how to save money and always feel like I've accomplished something when I can combine store sales and coupons. It's like I'm pulling a fast one on CVS. (Am dork.)

If Dean would come on with the potty training, we'd save a good amount each month on diapers, both regular and the overnight variety.  He's not feeling it. In fact, he hates his little frog potty so much that we're ditching it and going with a seat that fits onto the big toilet. This is NOT a good example of economicalizing, but you do what you gotta, right? (I'm pretty sure I just invented the word "economicalizing."  I can tell you're impressed.)

With menu planning, coupon clipping and careful attention to our random spending (like on York peppermint patties!), we should be fine even with the added car note.  However, if anyone would like to hire me to write things for them or better yet, to sit on my couch reading blogs and drinking Coke Zero, I'm all over it.

You may ask yourself...

Why doesn't Jen talk about her students this semester?

I'm not teaching this semester.

Why isn't Jen teaching this semester?

Well, an opportunity presented itself that I couldn't pass.  I got an inquiry from one of my stage management mentors from grad school asking if I'd be interested in stage managing 2 new plays at Alabama Shakespeare Festival between February and April.  I was interested.

Does this mean you'll never be able to go back to your teaching gig ever ever again?

No way.  In fact, the boss and the big boss were both VERY supportive. Remember, I'm an adjunct professor, which means I'm part-time on a semester-by-semester basis. I basically teach specialty classes, in my case, theatre and stage management, and overload classes that won't fit into the full-time faculty's schedules. I was just slated to teach one section of intro to theatre this spring (my management classes are out of rotation til next year), so they were quite understanding and willing to let me go, with the understanding that I"m interested and availble for next fall.  Not to mention, I'll be doing what I DO, what I teach others to DO.  I don't want to be that teacher who hasn't done her thing in 10 years.  Theatre technology is constantly changing and I need to keep up, lest I teach outdated things to my little whiz kids.  They were also excited that I could offer our students current contacts at ASF, especially since it's one of the only professional theatres in our state.

What does Dean think about all this?

Dean's pretty jazzed that his manny, BJ, is going to be spending a bit more time with him and he's excited about the increased guy time with his dad.  He's also excited that he gets Mommy all to himself all day on Mondays, which will be my day off. 

Is the pay better?

You better believe it.  Let's put it this way (without getting too specific):  I"ll make more in 2 weeks working at ASF than I would teaching one class for an entire semester.  This will allow us to have some much-needed electrical work done to our house and will also help us build our savings back to the healthy place it was when we moved to Montevallo.  And I can get a pedicure. And possibly a latte from Starbuck's.

When does Jen start?

Feb. 15 begins my "pre-production week." That's the week before rehearsals actually begin, when I go to the theatre and prepare things, like paperwork, scripts, the rehearsal studio, etc.  I'm slated to have a production assistant who will help me, but I'm not sure whether or not that person will be on contract during pre-production.  Rehearsals start on the 23rd for the first show.  As soon as the first show opens, we start rehearsals for the second show. That one ends on April 26.  It'll be busy, but it should go by quickly.

Will Jen sleep?

Possibly.  Jen will be coming home as much as she can.  I'll have an apartment in Montgomery for nights when rehearsal goes late and during our long days of technical rehearsals, so I will stay there some.  But the way the schedule looks, I should be able to make it home most nights to spend some time with Dean before bed and to feed him breakfast in the morning.

What does this mean for Jen's blog readers?

Hopefully, I'll still be able to blog about 3 times a week.  I've lined up several guest posts for Comfort Food Saturday (still accepting recipes, if you're interested!) and I'm pre-writing some posts to put up while I'm busy.  I'll probably start doing Wordless Wednesday a little more, hopefully giving you some nice shots of the theatre, which is absolutely gorgeous.  If you've got questions about what I do or my shows, I'm happy to talk about that, too, as much as I can.

So that's what's happening with me.  I'm excited to get back into a professional theatre setting for a while, especially since I'll be working on 2 new plays.  There's nothing quite like collaborating on a play for the first time in its existance to get your creative juices flowing.  And at the end of it all, Dean and I will become "people of leisure" for the entire summer, hopefully sleeping in a bit, working on our herb and vegetable garden, taking swimming lessons and just letting the days go by.

About that podiatrist appointment...

It very much did not happen. I spent most of this morning freaking myself out to the point of nausea over the idea of some doctor I'd never met cutting my toe. Yes, I had a human removed from my body (AND AN EPIDURAL!) 11 months ago and was hardly nervous about THAT, but my toe? OH MY GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSSSSSSSSSHHHHHHH! Anywho, I picked Marcus up at work, came home and had lunch, fed Dean and got ready to go. I called my mom on the way to the doctor so she could distract me and explain one more time exactly what they were going to do. I got into the office, saw that it was clean and settled in a bit. I even read a little flyer about ingrown toenails. I had just finished filling out my mountain of paperwork and was sitting down to play with my new phone when the receptionist called me to her window and said "You knwo this is going to cost you $286, right?" I said "HUUUUUUUUUH????????????" Appparently all outpatient procedures are subject to our deductible, which we haven't met because we JUST GOT OUR INSURANCE CARDS THIS WEEK and have not been to the doctor since going on this insurance. (We have been taking a tacky print-out as proof of benefits when we take Dean to the pediatrician.) Anyway, I called Marcus, we shared a laugh, and I told the lady thanks, but I'd be keeping my ingrown toenail. It really doesn't hurt that much. I'll let my dad work on it tomorrow.

Who else thinks this woman should have told me about the cost of this on the phone when I made the appointment? Or maybe I'm dense and should have realized this ahead of time. Either way, they did not get my money today. (see previous entries regarding the money tree and its current emptiness)

We head out tomorrow for our holiday travel extravagganza! Forgive me if my blogging is spottier than usual. Hope everyone's days are merry and bright!