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YESTERDAY MORNING AT 2:30 I awoke and looked at the clock. Two more hours! I thought. In two more hours the alarm clock is going to go off. I was alone, as my yard man had left about twelve hours earlier to head for Kentucky on horse business. (Dear Reader, he's got so many jobs on the side, it's a wonder he manages to get any yard work done!) Before he left, he'd rigged up a bucketful of bricks to hold a big beach umbrella, and he helped me finagle a heavy folding table into the back seat of the car. I was the one, then, who stuffed the trunk with armloads of stuff and boxes and bags that I'd stuffed full of stuff--stuff from the attic and stuff from closets and stuff from the basement and stuff....well, you get the idea--we had too much stuff! I'd decided to give one more shot to Investment of Time in Divestment of Things--the plan: to drag paraphernalia to a flea market (as we're too far off the beaten path to have a yard sale in the yard).

Enough time had elapsed since I tried this before--the kind of time that glosses over the drudgery involved and shines a light on the enjoyment of watching people poke around in one's pile of stuff and--oh, yes, please!--make it their stuff (the idea of which was the stuff of which my dreams were made).

I had called the number posted where the flea market is held each Friday and Saturday of summer. "Is Friday a pretty good day to come?" I asked the man who answered the phone.
"Oh, it's often been as good as Saturday," he said.
Excellent, I thought. I'd rather go on Friday. "And what time do the people who are selling usually come to set up?" I inquired next.
"Well," he said, "it officially starts at six, but folks usually show up at five to get a good space."
"Five o'clock?!" Suddenly the word 'cockamamie' came to mind.
"Where are the best spaces?" I asked.
He told me the area that vendors seemed to prefer, and talked a bit more about the procedure. And then we hung up. There was no need to register--one could simply show up.

Which meant, of course, that a decision as to truly and actually following through with the plan could be made at 2:30 a.m. or at 2:50 a.m. or at 3:14 a.m. or at any old time...as I tossed and turned and failed to return to sleep. The conversation with myself went something like this: Oh, good grief, if I manage to go back to sleep RIGHT NOW, I'll only get five and a half hours of sleep (needless to say, the number kept dwindling). I could turn off that blasted alarm and forget the whole thing--drive directly to the thrift shop tomorrow. Yes! That's what I'll do! Except, geez...all of that time I've already invested...... And won't it be fun? It's to be a fabulous day, not anything like the last time I tried this scheme! Then I'd breathe very deeply and tell myself I was going to. go. to. sleep. NOW.

I didn't make a decision.
I didn't turn off the alarm.
But twenty minutes later, I was sneaking a peek at the clock again. I was weighing the pros and cons.

Until finally I looked at the clock and it read: 4:28. I'd had three and a half hours of sleep. It was time to decide!
I reached over and turned off the alarm.


(to be cont'd.)


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