Broken Resolutions and Unfinished Crafts

The first week of the 2024 is over and all I have to show for it is a pedicure and a ten dollar bill from winning at Bingo. Considering it costs five bucks to play it’s not a win big enough to celebrate. But the popcorn was free and the company was good so there’s that. I never played the game before moving here to the continuum care campus but as the saying goes, “When in Rome do as the Romans do.” Side note here: Does anyone else find it interesting that that idiom was first found in writing in 1777 and we still use the phrase today? Supposedly it was a quote spoken by St Ambrose and written in a letter by St Augustine about napping in the middle of the afternoon. I’m almost sure the phrase back in that era in Rome also referred to pigging out at decadent parties and a few other things that one would not put in a letter to the Pope. But at my age I might have a foggy memory of the allegorical paintings I studied in art history class back in my youth and I could be a half century off on when the Decadent Movement was at its height in Rome. I hate that I can remember obscure paintings like the one above but I forgot to buy baby aspirin when I was at the grocery store yesterday.

If you are a long time reader of this blog you know I’m not fond of getting pedicures and have only been getting them for a few years of life. I resent the time and money spent and trying to make myself understood when I say things to indicate that I want the cheapest pedicure they give but still end up paying $50 plus a tip. Once it was $60 and I have no idea how that happened!

Finally, after getting my first ingrown toenail---that, by the way, cost over $300 to treat!----I have a pedicurist I like. The foot doctor’s office has one under their umbrella of services and you have to have their recommendation to get on the client list. They don’t push polish, did a great job, it only it took a 1/2 hour and the charge was $40 plus I tipped her $10. They call them medical pedicurists and they are trained to look for issues like ingrown toenails, fungi and other potential issues we don’t want on our feet.

The new year came with a couple of new resolutions but already I fell off the wagon of carrying them to the goal line. But before I share that part I want to ask if anyone has done the Swedish Death Cleaning? A few years ago there used to be a blogger in our circle of bloggers who did it---Judy gave away everything she didn’t use anymore, finished up all her unfinished projects and drastically de-cluttered her mobile home then deep cleaned it thoroughly. The idea is to make it easier on your family when you die. The name gives me the willies but I saw clips of the Swedish Death Cleaning TV series and from what I saw it was a kinder, gentler version of Mari Kondo's show.

I live with a lot of guilt over not downsizing as much as I could have/should have when I moved. And with the turning of the new year I made up my mind that I need to do something about that. I’m 80-fu*king-two, after all. But that notion lasted about a half a week when I couldn’t decide where to start. So instead I planned to finish up a few craft projects. One was a cashmere scarf that I started seven years ago but life got in the way and I stopped working on it. Picking it up now it took me three days just to figure out where on the complicated pattern I left off. I finished it but if you look close enough you'll see my skill level has gone down hill.

Next I tried picking up a project I started on circular needles and after a night of working on it I gave myself permission to rip it all out, put the yarn in my stock box and declare that I don’t need to know how to do everything. That felt good too. My mom did beautiful sweaters on circular needles and even though I've done a lot of knitting over the years I never liked holding the circular needles. 

Next up was either a half done knitted teddy bear or a cut-out 3” velveteen teddy bear to construct or a cross-stitch that only has a one inch square left to do. The cross stitch I started back in the1960s when my brother was hospitalized after his appendix burst and I’ve only worked on that cross-stitch when someone in the family was hospitalized. I no more than put the kit case by my La-Z-Boy when it spooked me out, thinking if I start working on it someone will end up with a medical emergency. I listened to my inner voice and put that project back where I found it. 

The next day I completely failed at my resolve to finish up all my unfinished craft projects when I bought some yarn on impulse to start something new, a sampler of knitting stitches. I might be 82 but I’m not dead! I thought standing in front of the yarn bins. And maybe if I make a sampler project like I did when I first learned to knit as a teenager it will turn out to be a good thing, like putting a period at the end of the last sentence in a book. Ya, I'm not taking any bets on whether or not this will turn out to be my last knitting projects.

Until Next Wednesday…  ©

                                                                 My Seven Year Scarf  

*The painting above by Thomas Couture is titled: The Romans in their Decadence. (French: Les Romains de la décadence) First shown in Paris in 1847.

 

Visting my Not-so-Distant Future

 My mini vacation ended. But that’s okay. I only got one in the first place because my house sold faster than I expected and I woke up the morning after accepting an offer a bit shell shocked with no reason to get out of bed. I did it anyway. I wandered the house looking for things I could do that would get me back to normal living but at the same time would still keep the house as neat as nun’s habit because the appraiser is still on the docket to make an appointment. (Inspections got waved as did a survey so this is the only thing coming up between now and closing day.) I’m sure an appraiser won’t care that my bottles and jars of ‘products’ and my electric tooth brush made their way on to my bathroom countertop or that my In Case of Emergency notebook is back on the kitchen countertop or that I’m not locking up my computer after each use like I was doing when the ShowHome app could request a showings at any time.  

After a few days I walking around in a haze I started the process of getting back into The Great Moving Project mode on Sunday by making a list of everything I need to do between now and October fifth. It’s two pages long and maybe if I’m still in a lazy mood the next time I have a blog post due, I’ll just post the list. Besides making that list the only other thing I did Sunday was to water three house plants and grill myself a steak. I didn’t even get dressed.

Monday I had an appointment to go visit my future home including the parking level of the building. I was the 24^th person to sign up to live in the new section of this continuum care campus and it was just an artist’s renderings back then. The first 25 of us to sign up got a lot of perks and one of those perks was we got to pick our own parking spots in the same order we made our first payment. If I had been number one I probably would have picked the same space I scored. How cool is that! It’s directly across from the elevator doors and when the doors open, right in the line of sight, is a huge picture window with a view of the lake---one of only three down there. I can't believe my luck! I got my lakeside window! Why did 23 others passed it up? Maybe to put in a bigger storage unit in front of their car than the one that comes free? I'm hoping I’m not missing something because I love the joke of being able to say I have a unit with a lake view and I truly couldn't see any downside to that space.

The other views in my actual unit frankly suck and I’m going to mourn the loss of solitude and peace I get when looking out my back and side yards---the wildlife, the flowers, the birds, the grass and trees. The amphibians coming out of the cattail bog in the spring. At my new place I’ll only have a few feet of buffer between my deck and the sidewalk where “landscaping” will go---shrubs and flowers, according to the woman who took me on my the tour this week---but the buffer isn't enough to give you any sense of privacy. 

Across the street from my windows is a field that will be turned into a butterfly and flower garden, with mature woods in the distance maybe the length of a football field away. Sounded good on paper but directly in front of my den window across the street before the garden space starts are 5-6 pipes/vents coming out of the ground that stand 2 to 4 feet high. Supposedly they’ll have evergreens planted around them to cover them up (and block my view beyond). Touring other continuum care places, before buying into this one I’ve seen far worse views, though, and I’m happy I’ll only be a half block away from paved two walking paths that go around the lake or through the woods. The campus itself is tucked off the main road, making it feel “countrified” without it being in the country. The very first time I drove down that entry road I said, "This is where I want to be" and that road through mature trees still calls my name, connects me to my youth when we'd go to our summer cottage.

I’m not good at taking photos with my cellphone (my hand is too shaky) and my new computer and my decades old digital camera aren’t speaking so please forgive the quality of the pictures below. The lights are not working in my apartment yet either so these pictures will have to do for now.

The photo at the top is of the window at the end of my main room which is a living room, dining area and kitchen combined down the center of the apartment. The master bedroom and bath are on one side off the main room and a laundry room, half bath and den on the other side. The walls (except for the master bedroom and bath) are bright white so these photos are deceptive.  ©

Den/hobby room

 

kitchen - on the left not in view is the door to the common hall, to the right out of view is the refrigerator and where the workman's cart is in the foreground is where my Amish oak table and chairs will be.

bedroom wall with pocket door to the maser bath - the color here is stop on.

other side of the bedroom

laundry room - originally I was going to take the doors off the lower cupboard to create Levi's cave thus the stacking water/dryer instead of the standard set. Side-by-sides looked better but by the time he died it was too late to change it. Right now my washer and dryer are so large I only have to do three loads a week. I'll be doing far more with these playhouse sized machines.

half bath

This is the master bath with the closet door on the left and a vanity with two of the smallest sinks I've ever seen on the right. They cracked me up and I joked about having a sink for each hand because they are too small to wash them both together in one. The vanity itself is big though, bigger than I have now.

Below is a very bad photo of my masrer closet.  Seeing it made me go home and downsize a large trash bag full of clothing out of my current closet. AGAIN! The room itself is big on paper but the closet system doesn't take advantage of what could have been a better use of that space. I had about 40" of things on hangers to downsize. In addition to the bag for Goodwill I had some were easy choices like sweatpants, t-shirts and PJs that can be folded and put on shelves not in the photo. Other choices were painful like some good quality, classic Pendleton wool clothing that was slightly too small. I'll put on Facebook Marketplace when the weather is cooler. I had no trouble getting good money out of my husband's Pendletons. 

Oh Happy Days!

Have you ever felt so happy and light-hearted that you keep looking behind you to see if you’re farting rainbows and puppy dogs? Me neither but I came close today. The euphoric lift in my caboose might not have come from leaving a trail of puppies in my wake but I swear there’s a rainbow following me around and before you ask, it smells just like wet grass and cotton candy---strawberry cotton candy and good old, Kentucky bluegrass. To be honest the scent in the air is probably coming from the neighbor who is mowing his lawn and I have a Dutch Rusk smeared with strawberry jam sitting next to my keyboard. Ya, in my world I have the super powers of a five year old girl. If a rabbit was in my view right now my imagination would turn him into a unicorn. That said, I just used 148 words of my 1,000 word quota to convey that I’m having a great day.

What brought on this happy mood? Simple. Yesterday the son-I-wish-I-had spent a couple of hours helping me clean my garage and now there is nothing left out there to purge before I get the house whipped into shape for the listing. When Tim drove off with his trailer loaded with my stuff he also took a lot of my stress with him. What was in the trailer? He took---bought actually---five large metal cabinets that filled up one wall; three large boxes of e-Bay shipping supplies (he does e-Bay too); five long tables from the days when Don and I were vendors at swap meets (four more will go later on); a snow blower plus driveway salt and snow shovels; two vintage 20 gallon metal ice cream drums that I was using to hold tools with long handles; an assortment of tools like a roof rake, shovels and gardening tools; a box of wood scraps; and several full sheets of Masonite that I used to create a ‘bull pen’ for my shipping activities.

There were things in that load Tim hauled away that I could have tried to sell on Facebook Marketplace like the snow blower but even though it was in mint condition I figured no one would buy it this time of the year, however the e-Bay supplies would have been an easy sale. But I screwed up with the vintage ice cream drums. I should have looked up their value before giving them to Tim who, by the way, was elated to get them. He said he’s wanted them for years and I realized too late that I lost an opportunity for a $100 barter. It’s what we do. We barter and with the move coming up I’m going to be on the bottom side of our little game. Still, it turned out great this week. He moved a bird bath in the yard for better drive-by appeal, helped me in the garage, was great company and at the end I owed him $100 for his labor and he owed me $125 for the cabinets and $12 for twelve Rubbermaid boxes. (I've probably got 40 more empty Rubbermaid boxes to clean up and use for packing up the house for the move, after which Tim is barter/buying them all.)

The garage is only 90% ready for photo day but it makes sense as a garage again. I could park four small cars in there now or a RV and two cars. A 24 foot sail boat would fit or a pop-up van with a wheelchair lift and ramp like we had in the oversized space. There’s more square footage in that garage than in the place I'm moving into. One guy who came to pick up a Marketplace purchase took one look at the vaulted ceiling, showroom lighting and finished wall with miles of pegboard and said, “Wow! I could live in this garage!”  In other words, it’s a guy’s dream garage which I’m hoping will help sell the house because the kitchen is not a woman's dream kitchen. It's too small by today's standards and not an inch of granite or stainless steal to be seen.

When my husband was alive 2/3 of the garage was his show-and-tell space for his Classic Corvette and all his gas & oil collectibles---restored gas pumps from the 1920s, porcelain signs, tall glass oil bottles and metal cans. We also had a showcase of “smalls” which in gas & oil collector’s circles means we had everything that gas stations once gave away for promotionals. We specialized in Smalls when we had booths in several antique malls and would do swap meets out of state in the summers.

In the first two summers after Don died, Tim and I systematically e-Bayed all of Don’s collection. Tim sold the pumps, globes, larger signs---things we knew would sell for big bucks---and I sold the rest. We did it that way because he was taking a 30% commission out of anything he sold and with cheaper things it wasn’t worth his effort. Paying him that 30% was well worth it because he covered the e-Bay fees and handled all the shipping and pickups which was no small feat to arrange on those old gas pumps and globes. Those two summers our e-Bay accounts were both going hot and heavy. And now, for the first time since I’ve lived here, my garage is just a garage. OH HAPPY DAYS!

The photo below is of the one-piece, hand painted Musgo gas globe and it was Don's pride and joy. When he first offered $5,000 for it and let the seller work him up the $7,000 I thought they were both crazy. But fast forward 15 years and his investment sold for $20,000 (minus Tim's $2,000 broker's fee for arranging the private sale to another collector) which in turn helped me pay off my mortgage early. Now, there are three piece reproductions on the market which always drives the prices down on the originals. I sold it at the right time. I've always hated having large sums of money invested in breakable antiques and I was glad to get the Musgo out of the house, having once broke a $4,000 globe just packing it up to take to swap meet. My husband wasn't even mad. "Why aren't you yelling at me?" I asked. "Why should I?" he replied, "You feel bad enough for both of us."

All traces of its former uses are gone from my garage and my life is about to change, leaving behind my wheeling and dealing memories. And there are a lot of memories involved. My husband was the up-front man who bought and sold the stuff but I'm the one who worked behind the scenes cleaning, polishing and pricing it all. I'm the one who did the packing and unpacking for shows and the mall restocking and who single-handedly hung it all in our garage after Don's stroke, then I e-Bayed it after he died not to mention I was with him when he bought most of that stuff. 

Now, I'm looking forward to getting re-acquainted with that five year old girl who lives inside of me and who wants nothing more than to pretend I'm about to move into a tiny cottage near a lake where I'll be free to paint and write all day long, occasionally looking over my shoulder to see if I'm leaving a trail of rainbows and puppy dogs in my wake. ©

Photo Notes: The top photo is of one wall as it looked when my husband was a live but I can't find a digital photo of the wall of the gas pumps and globes, and I don't have the time to deal with finding a print copy to scan. The center photo is of my husband (in the wheelchair) and a good friend (to the left) and his friend's brother who is standing in front of the showcase of Smalls.

Facebook Marketplace or Goodwill?

People who buy stuff off Facebook Marketplace are a hoot and a holler away from being your typical flea market shoppers. (That's not an insult, by the way, I used to love flea markets and have been on both sides of the goods bought and sold.) But few Facebook shoppers seem to care about being on time…only the ones over 60 know how to do it when they say they will pick up what you’re selling. When Marketplace shoppers say, for example, “I’ll be there at 5:30” what they really mean is “I punch out of work at 5:30” or “I’ll leave my house at 5:30.” One lady came almost two hours late. I thought she’d ghosted me. (Look at me, I’m using young people speak.) No phone text or message on Facebook came saying that she was running late. She just showed up with the lame excuse that she had to pick up her kids from school and then had to stop to get them some Chicken McNuggets because she didn’t have change to pay me for what she was going to buy. Okay, I thought, that doesn't take two hours…so what happened to the rest of the time? She bought $65 worth of dishes so I kept my Mad Hannah face hidden behind my mask and accepted her apology and cash graciously. 

Another guy who was right on time at precisely 8:05 AM would have made me mad if I’d gotten up and dressed that early and he had shown up late but I knew that wouldn’t happen because he was dropping his kids off at a charter school a two minute ride away. I had a 12 foot tall tree trimmer for sale, a really old one that I quickly figured out wouldn’t sell right away (if at all) because the newer ones are made of aluminum while mine was made out of wood. When he sent the first messaging asking if it was still available he also wanted to know, “Is it really heavy?” to which I answered honestly that it was. “Okay,” he writes back, “I still want it.” 

I liked the guy before he even got here. Yes, I stalked him on Facebook and found out he was a single dad and was getting high praises from all his friends for being such a good father of three wholesome looking kids. So I was pretty sure he wouldn’t use that wicked blade on the tree trimmer to hack me up. This, and I was bigger than him and could have taken him down in a pinch. When he got here, he picked up the trimmer, a big smile on his face. “Just as I thought,” he says, “I’m going to get a really good workout using this. I like to build my exercise into my chores so I don't have to waste time going to a gym.” People passed over that old heavy trimmer for several weeks but he saw its negative quality and turned it into positive. I wanted to hug him like the teddy bear that he was but, of course, I didn't. Instead I pressed the essence of his upbeat attitude into my Mental Scrapbook to savor later on.

Then there was the long-haired humorless guy, late teens or early twenties, who had no searchable data showing on his Facebook page. He was interested in a black and white print of a well-known tree in town. The print was older than him, the tree is older than me. The print was created by a long-gone local artist who still has an international following. I made a mistake in the listing price of $27 when I meant to price it at $72, but I didn’t have enough time to edit it because within two minutes of me listing it the guy messaged me for the pick up address and said he'd be over in fifteen minutes. He was on his way before I noticed my mistake. 

He was good for his word on the time but not on the cash. He only brought a twenty dollar bill, claimed he didn't see the two. Kids today don't carry cash like my generation. He offered the full amount with his phone app---that's the way young people do Marketplace, they transfer funds from their account to the seller's account---but I don't trust my dyslexia moments enough to have PayPal on my phone. I didn’t think he was trying to pull that old flea marketer’s trick of claiming to be a few bucks short on cash, hoping the seller would say, “That’s okay, take it.” Never the less, that’s exactly what I did say because I doubt I paid more than ten bucks for that print back when I was his age. He studied that piece of art like an appraiser working for Christies Auction House. While he was doing that I asked him if he was an artist---he looked the part and knew enough to look for "half moons" in the paper, gave it the smell test for mold and other things that he didn't find. “No, I'm just building myself a collection of nice, original art.” It crossed my mind that maybe he was a shill buyer for someone with an art gallery who knew that in the right, international art auction they could turn it over for $250 to $300 but I’d rather believe he was just a kid with similar tastes in art to mine and that he’ll always remember me as that elderly woman who sold him The Old Gnarly Tree at a killer price.

That same day I listed the frames in the photo up above on Facebook. (Those were in was my bedroom before I redid it with a cottage, seaside theme.) Within an hour five people asked if they were available and I replied to them all with the same "Yes, they are" but only one answered back. I don’t get why people ask if something is still available one minute and five minutes later they act like you gave them the wrong answer and they don't say boo after that. That fifth lady who did reply made an appointment for 6:00 PM but 6:00 came and went and she didn’t show up. I've had other marketplace people show up really late or call to reschedule but she was my first no-show. But I didn't take it personally. Life happens to us all. It's just frustrating and if you want to sell on Facebook Marketplace you'll need patience and flexibility. 

The next day I was off to Goodwill and recycling. If the back end of my Trax hadn't been full those frames might have gone with me. Something tells me they're going to be a lot of trouble for the lousy twenty bucks I'm asking. As I waited my turn in the drop off lane, I was flabbergasted by the way the lady in front of me dumped her totes upside down in Goodwill's rolling cart. Clothes, games, household decor, appliances, etc., all tumbling out, mixed together with no rhyme or reason. She didn't even tape a jig saw puzzle box closed and, of course, it spilled all over the place. My stuff was in labeled boxes and anything inside of the boxes that belonged together, like a stapler and boxes of staples, were sealed together in zip-lock bags. I also label anything that isn't easily recognizable like an adaptive device to help one-handed pool players. Like I've said before, downsizing is like living your life in reverse. I couldn't just throw out that little thing when it could help some disabled guy (like my husband was) to get back into billiards again. But seeing the cue holder again sure brought back a bunch of buried memories. ©