Snooze, You Lose

I had spent a few hours selling junk at the flea market and decided I would take the long way home and stop and see what mom was doing. It was before noon on Friday which still left a few hours to visit local yard sales, which is a favorite pastime of ours. I had noticed several sales coming over the mountain and that's the way we headed. The first place we stopped wasn't really a yard sale, it was more of a permanent-type set up that is always selling junk. It's not normally where you can find a good deal. We had wanted to check out a few other locations in that area but my sugar started to drop and we went to lunch instead. (Mom and I never miss an opportunity to eat out!) Mom usually adopts the requirements of the diet that I am on at any given time. The flavor of the month this time is the Adkin's Diet or low carbohydrate diet. Of course, when I have hypoglycemia, I have to have carbohydrates, or sugar, quickly to raise my blood glucose level or I can have a seizure. (Check out Julia Robert's having a seizure in Steel Magnolias and you'll see for yourself; it ain't pretty.) Mom decided she wanted the half chef salad with blue cheese dressing on the side. They didn't have blue cheese, so she ordered french. I'm not sure if the waitress was hard of hearing or not but she thought mom said ranch and they kept getting louder and louder as the server would say RANCH and mom would say NO! FRENCH! After several exchanges it was determined that they didn't have french, and mom ended up with ranch after all. After lunch we headed over to the other side of town and were headed back towards Mom's house on a back road. We do like to explore and ended up following signs advertising a yard sale well off the beaten path. In fact, it was way past being out in the boonies and we thought we were heading to Timbuktu or it's neighbor, East Fumble Buck. We pulled up to a house that had it's entire yard filled with junk; our kind of place. The lady having the sale was talking to some fella about medical problems or something but nodded in our direction. I had seen that guy before at sales around town; he'll talk your ear off. The lady had a very large table piled with paperback books and a sign said they were a quarter each. Now, that's a really good price and I was thinking about making the lady an offer to buy the entire table. "How much for the whole table?" I asked. The lady walked away from Mr. Talkative and over to the table. Now, I had a price in my head and if she was anywhere close to it, I was going to get the whole shebang. "Oh, 'bout ten dollars," she said. Before I even had time to process that amount Mom walks over and says, "Sold!" The lady and I looked at each other; we didn't know mom wanted in on the deal. I started to say something to mom when she shushed me and said, "Snooze, you lose, go get the car, those books are mine!" What's a daughter to do? I wanted the books. You're right, I went and got the car...