It's Like Pulling Teeth

I am an estate sale addict. I go to as many as I can, within a reasonable distance, every Saturday and Sunday. Sometimes there can be as many as ten, and sometimes as few as one. On those weekends where there are several, I usually will have to cut out some of them to balance family time. That's the tough part--trying to be a part of two separate things that I love, all at once. My wife, Nicki, rarely buys anything used, and never clothing, and has only been to maybe one sale with me before. My daughter, Alex, is generally not very adventurous and doesn't itch to leave home. Worst of all though, she says, is the smell. About a quarter of the time the homes that I go into will have an old, musty kind of smell, and rarely will have an animal scent. And it has seemed to be Alex's luck that a majority of the ones she's been to have been "stinky". So, therein lies my problem, involving myself in both things together. In the beginning, when I started funksauce, Alex went on quite a few with me because it worked out with running errands, giving Nicki some alone time, etc. Since then, however, she has fallen out of favor with them, which has left me a little more strapped for time. Finally and miraculously, two weekends ago, Alex and Nicki went to one with me. As we were walking up the steps to it, I could smell the old house smell, one that I can't explain and only recognize through experience. Needless to say, Alex didn't want to go to any more, and I couldn't bribe her with the little shot glass she wanted for 75 cents because my wife, the CFO of funksauce operations, was there to control my budget spending. I forced Alex to go to two more later that day with me, which always is tough because she complains most of the time and wants to be held, which is tough when I'm trying to go through people's clothing racks with one hand and struggling to hold her up in the other. So on Friday mornings when I open up the web classifieds, part of me wishes for only a few in my area, because if there are more I'll be tempted to go, like I'll be missing out on something. My CFO has held a meeting with me that it's time to start focusing less on junking up her basement with more stuff and more on advertising to the masses. Secretly, I think that this is her way of telling me that she doesn't want to go to any more sales. My mini-CFO can't articulate this in sales terms, so she'll keep bringing out the "stinky" defense. Overruled. My addiction will be the biggest fight to fight. It's like pulling teeth to get anybody to do anything, including my own.