Rally Time

April usually means one thing around here. Garage Sale. Carter's former babysitter has had a sale in early April for many years, almost always the first sale of the area to bring out the thrift shoppers from their winter hibernation.

Since it is this coming Friday, Saturday and Sunday, I figured I better rally the troops to get stuff together. And well, by troops I mean me and by rally I mean rally up some energy to put on price tags – the most tedious process and the No. 1 reason I usually donate stuff to charity. Not a big fan but I wanted to contribute more than just the leftover Carter clothes from last year.

I also knew I wanted to clean out a coffee table that has sat in a corner of the basement, gathering toys on the inside and dust and cobwebs on the outside. That sort of got me on a random basement cleaning project. I priced some stuff, threw out some stuff, and hung onto some stuff. Some not by choice.

I had planned to sell this kitty cubby that Sylvester NEVER uses. Today she had different ideas. Just like a kid cleaning their room and finding "new" toys they forgot they had. So I guess we'll keep it for now, Sly. But if she doesn't use it the rest of the week, it's gone.

I managed to take a CRV load over to Audrey's and will take more over this week if I rally up any more energy to price things I can or should part with.

Meanwhile, my friends are having fun with the other big thing April symbolizes around here. Primary Election.

Tuesday is the primary in Wisconsin so all of the presidential candidates are rallying up support around the Badger State. I had some friend see Cruz and Trump earlier this week and I had 3 girlfriends (they don't all know all each other) attend the Bernie Sanders rally today in Wausau.

Our friend Lori was the first one there at 5:20 a.m. and stood in the freezing temps for hours and hours. Our neighbors across the street – Mike, Cindy and their 20-year-old son Sam – headed up there at a more reasonable hour and got up there before 10 a.m. My friend Chris and her daughter Emily (who I mentored in confirmation) got there in time to basically be among the last ones in. They sat in the last row of the balcony!

Lori, though, was chosen to sit on stage with some choice Bernie supporters. That made it worth getting up and on the road at 4 a.m. Our neighbors also got to sit on stage! They saw Mike wearing his Union jacket and they wanted to be sure he got special treatment. How cool is that?

So here we are watching the news and we see Sam, Cindy and Mike to the left there and Lori right behind Bernie. That's awesome for them!

No matter what your political views are, it's exciting to be a part of the democratic process. Reminds me of my brushes with candidates of the past. For the 1988 election, I got to celebrate Al Gore's 40th birthday at his rally at UW-La Crosse. Got to see Paul "bowtie" Simon on campus, too, and shook Michael Dukakis' hand at a rally at the Eau Claire airport. It was fun time to be in the Campus Democrats. Ha. (I met someone else, too, but I gotta see if I can dig up the photo. Then I'll share that story later.)

I'm too tired to put any more effort into anything. I even got 10,000 steps today and, thanks to my work in the basement, my FitBit says I've "climbed" 15 flights of stairs, too.

Think I'll relax the rest of the evening while hubby gears up for his important April events – fantasy baseball draft tonight and Assumption High School baseball season opener tomorrow.

Pretty sure we're all going to need to rally up major energy come Monday morning.