Ch-ching!

Organizing the junk in our two-car garage in hopes that we might actually accommodate one small Jeep and therefore save that one extra monthly payment currently being misspent at the storage yard has been Jorge's priority for the past two weekends. This morning I pitched in and took care of the big bucket of loose change we've accumulated over the past year.

Our grocery store has one of those coin counting machines. With the help of the manager and an audience of check out ladies excitedly estimating my payout, I dumped the money in. All foreign coins, junction box slugs, amusement park tokens, broken seashells, paperclips, and lint balls were magically separated, the digital read-out displayed a running total, the machine deducted an eight percent service charge and then spit out a receipt for $324.07. It was like a good day in Vegas.

Sara and I immediately stopped by the consignment shop where we had taken all the furniture the previous owner of our house had left behind. Since our last big payday there, we had another receivable balance of $24.00. The funky old, black wood, Asian and Deco-influenced cabinet with the middle section that would just fit our smallish, flat screen TV, and drawers to conceal DVDs and CDs, and three large doors to store linens and china behind that I'd spotted the last time we dropped off a few more lamps was priced at $340.00.