My sister, Marcia, Julie, Violet and her friend went out to Montauk with me to enjoy the end of season and see if my house was still there after a bunch of twenty-somethings rented it for the summer.

For the most part it was in good shape and I loved that they didn’t bug me at all while they were there.

It’s always good to see Marcia. She lives far away so it doesn’t happen that often. We do fall right back in step though.

She was telling me a story of how a friend of hers went into a jewelry store that Marcia used to shop at and bargained the price of a watch down from $500 to $225. After that Marcia never went into that store again since she had always paid the prices they asked assuming they were firm and she didn’t know how to negotiate.

I agreed and told her a story about a period when dave and I started collecting antique musical instruments. I had gone into a flea market and saw two long horns. They were priced at $50 dollars. I went back and forth with the woman until she agreed to sell them both to me for $25.

As she was wrapping them up she said “I’m really losing money on this.”

I felt bad about that so my response was, “Well how about if I add another five dollars?”

I said to Marcia ” The look of shock on her face told me that I was..” I paused to think of a word, when Marcia jumped in with “a moron?”

It was like a mean version of Mad Libs.