Best Deal in Town

In the town that I live in we have a State Fair that runs the majority of the month of September. The traffic downtown, which is also where I live, is absolutely horrible. Most people don't know their way around. And, it doesn't help that it is very hard to try to figure out any rhyme or reason in our downtown street system.

We live very close to the fairgrounds - about 6 blocks- so September is a time when my neighbors and I just grit out teeth and try to stay at home as much as possible.

All around the fairgrounds businesses and residents charge people anywhere from $5-$20 to park in their lots or on their lawns. Some of these people make thousands of dollars each September. You will see homeowners sitting in their lawn chairs, holding huge cardboard signs and waving pom-poms on sticks. These pom-poms, I guess, attract attention and make it easier to direct the traffic on exactly where to park on your lawn (right next to the petunias, sir).

Last weekend, the weekend of the chicken pox, was going to be the weekend I was going to take the girls to the fair. The entire year builds up around this weekend. It's like Christmas to them. When the pox hit us, their disappointment was akin to not getting to celebrate Christmas.

Sophie was feverish, so she really had no fight in her, but Maya was desperately sad. I couldn't really do anything - go to the park, for example - because Soph was miserable AND contagious.

Now, we are six blocks from the fair. On a busy weekend the streets around my house totally fill up with parked cars around 11 am. So, I had the perfect idea. I had Maya make a cardboard sign - "Parking Only $2". We were going into business.

Sophie was able to come sit in the sun during some of the parking, but she wore herself out in about 15 minutes. We parked 10 cars each day and charged an RV $20 to park overnight in my driveway. Better money than a lemonade stand!

The whole point of this entry is to show you the following picture. Note the hastily scribbled sign stapled onto Maya's baton. (Yes, this is the same baton as in this post) More importantly note our version of a pom-pom on a stick. That would be my pink scarf tied onto a flyswatter. Cracked me up. Goes to show you, pride is not one of our sticking points....


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