On selling things

For about a year now (feels like a decade), I've been wanting to have a garage sale. Because our house is full of excess furniture, and ugly items. For those that don't know, we basically bought my boyfriends' parents' house and when they moved out... they didn't take much with them.

Which is great, because we inherited a fridge, freezer, dishwasher, washing machine and dryer. But bad, because we also inherited all the old ugly furniture and every single knick-knack they'd collected and hoarded over the past 15 years.

Since we bought the house nearly 2 years ago, I've continually wondered how a person could accumulate so much "stuff" that must be important (because it wasn't thrown away) and then not want to take it with them when they moved to another city. In my various spurts of cleaning out cupboards lately, I've found things such as C's mum's entire photo album collections, C's grandfather's war medals, certificates, awards, an entire collection of Elvis memorabilia and a whole lotta "stuff" that C won't let me throw out or sell because it's an heirloom, or important, or he just likes it.

But I managed to convince him we need to get rid of some of the larger items. Because it's a damned small house, and we have a serious storage problem. I want to replace the old sideboards and cabinets with bookshelves and the like.

So I finally set a date for our garage sale, and we spent two evenings lugging furniture and books out to the garage.

I haven't mentioned the books yet, but there were plenty. All mine, so I take fully reponsibility for my book-buying habit. I really need to get rid of some (to make room for more, you see).

Anyway, 7am finds C in bed (he worked really late and only got home at 5am) and me sitting in our garage realising I have done no advertising and my signs suck.

No customers for the first hour and a half. Only one random guy who came up and asked if I'd like him to mow his lawn. With our own lawnmower and petrol. For $20. I said no.

Luckily then my parents arrived and immediately started bustling about. Dad went down the street and stuck my signs to the street post. Mum helped with price labels. And at last I could leave them to watch the "shop" and get myself a blessed cup of tea.

Ended up we only sold a few items - some pot plants (which my parents brought with them as part of a clever marketing scheme, to draw punters in) and a single book. I think we made $8.

Oh well. Try again next time?

In the meantime, where am I going to park my car?

On Christmas

Two months since I last blogged. By now, readers, you will realise that I am not the most consistent person in the world. I hasten to assure you, however, that there was a time when I blogged EVERY DAY. Granted, I was in Uni then and had a bucket-load of spare time to devote to things like fandom and livejournal!

So Christmas is coming. Every year I make an internal resolve to organise things in October, every year I don't. It's closer than I realized too when you split it up into pay days. I think I only have about 3 until the big day.

This year I am working until New Year. We get the public holidays off, but otherwise I'll be at work every day. Including Christmas Eve, which I'm not looking forward to. Taking calls at 5pm on that day from people with very unrealistic expectations about what can or can't be done will be stressful, to say the least. I have had annual leave the past two Christmases so previously I've escaped this chaos for the most part.

I actually don't like Christmas much. That is to say, I detest tinsel, Santas and all the tacky decorations that spring up like Holiday Fairy vomit at this time of the year. I caused a bit of a stir in my team at work when I asked them not to tinsel-up my pod with their decorating. Announcing that I detest Christmas apparently is a bit shocking. One girl sat there with her mouth open and eyes wide, like I'd just announced I eat babies.

But there are things I LOVE about Christmas too. I love finding and buying the perfect gift. I love wrapping presents and the anticipation of giving and receiving. And I love that I get to spend oodles of time with my family. That part makes me happy.

Bang

So you'll never guess what I'm doing right now. Nope. Not that.
I'm loading ammunition.

Yep, I've been putting freaking gunpowder into bullet cases, yo. Nothing sinister going on at my house, just helping C out loading his ammo for his target shooting on the weekend.

He's asked me to go with him and I'm reluctant. Not because I don't enjoy firing a few rounds myself - and he will definately let me have a go - but because it's really, really boring most of the time you're there. It's like being in the army; lots of waiting around interspersed with exciting but short bursts of gunfire.

Ah well. I'll take a good book and try to catch up on my reading. And compliment his shooting, of course.

On dentists

My tooth hurts. It has for three days now. It's not terrible, just a faint dull ache but I'm coming to terms with the fact a dentist will need to be consulted. This has made me realise, I literally cannot remember the last time I went to the dentist. I can recall going as a child, and doing all those fun things like get fillings and get your tongue stuck on the spit-sucker, however I do not recall ever going since I left high school. And that's 11 years ago!

And it's not even that I'm afraid. I actually used to quite like getting a tooth pulled, or a filling put in. It was interesting. And for some insane reason, I had faith that it wouldn't hurt. Whether it was the power of the mind or not, it never did. Even when one time the dentist offered to do a filling without any anaesthetic, which I enthusiasically accepted. Looking back, that seems bizarre. I guess I was just a strange kid.

I am afraid of one thing now though - not the pain. It's the cost. What does it cost to go to the dentist these days? I was kind of hoping it was one of those things you can bulk bill like the doctor, but I am informed no such luck. It's money I can ill-afford but I guess it's got to be done. Or I can put up with this tooth. Hmmm.

On tiredness

Last night when I got home from work, I was tired. I was tired when I went to bed, and I woke up tired with a headache. What have I been doing to myself? Nothing. Absolutely nothing out of the ordinary. Just a boring, vanilla day at work and a coffee afterwards with a friend.

It makes me wonder - if I, a girl of not-yet-30, with no children with only a laid-back boyfriend to keep alive, am this exhausted from a day's work, how to working mothers get anything done?

I could barely cook anything for dinner last night. Embarrassingly, I nagged the boyfriend into shoving a few frozen chicken tenders into the oven and we had these with some salad. Not very nutritious, but it was the best I could manage, due to the fact I hadn't had time to go to the butcher and my other half does not even think of such things half the time.

Now imagine the working mother. Gets up, gets everyone breakfast and off to school. Goes to work. Works. Catches the long train or bus home after a stressful day in the office. Picks the kids up from childcare or where ever, goes home. Cooks dinner. Listens to everyone's stories. Cleans up the kitchen, stacks the dishwasher. In between she might put on a load of washing and later put it in the drier. (I imagine this is what might happen as my household of only two people cannot get by only washing on the weekend). Tucks kids in bed. Finally has a moment to herself and indulges in a well-earned cup of tea. What a day!

I can't even fathom it. And it makes me feel exceedingly worried why I find it so hard to even squeeze in a half hour workout at the gym three times a week. Maybe I need some time management lessons. Or just need to pull my socks up. We'll see.

On camp

For the last three days I have been at camp. I haven’t been to camp for 13 years, the last time being Year 12. Ironically, it was the same darn camp! Located on a beautiful lake and nestled amoungst the surronding bushland, I felt quite cut off from civilisation. I didn’t even think about TV for the first 24hrs. It was a strange sensation, being unable to watch telly or movies; or text whenever I wanted. My mobile service provider had no coverage, but some of the other ladies had service. I noticed their mobiles were constantly ringing, and they were forever dashing out of the main hall to deal with family crises. I must admit to feeling a bit smug at these points. Unreachable exc ept by the public phone at the camp (and this number given out with strict instructions to the boyfriend: for emergency use ONLY), I was very close to being unplugged.

There’s a book I want to read, called ‘The Winter of our Disconnect’, about a family that isolated themselves from all modern communications and technology for six months. I don’t claim to want to serve that period of disconnection for myself, but for the three days I did, I was happy. There was something satisfiying to just experience the world. Not to constantly check emails, texts, tweets. Not to be constantly bombarded with advertising, and given news updates even if you don’t want them. As a side note, I have basically given up watching the news because it’s so distressing. I know it’s a head-in-the-sand attitude, but I know that if it’s important enough, the news will get through to me. You can’t avoid it, even when you’re cut off in the middle of the bush! This was demonstrated by a text to my mother by my father, referring to “that UFO”. She had intermittant service on her mobile there, but the only person bothering her was dad. Turns out he was one of many people to spot a supposed UFO at 5.45am on Saturday morning in the skies over Queensland. He was most excited, then disappointed that it turned out to be a privately-launched rocket losing orbit.

The camp itself was for scrapbooking. Yes, I am aware of scrapping’s old-lady image. It could do with a public relations overhaul, I must say! But I’m unashamed of my love for it, and am even a consultant for Creative Memories, a traditional and digital scrapbooking company. The camp was exclusively for CM consultants and their customers – and is so popular that this year they are running not one but two weekend retreats. Basically, we scrap the entire time. And eat. But mainly scrap. I got so much done, I actually ran out of photos and paper by Sunday, and truthfully will be quite happy if I do not see a scrapbook page for a week. There is such a thing as too much of a good thing after all!

So my weekend went something like this: arrive, scrap, eat, scrap, bed, sleep, morning walk, eat, scrap, eat, scrap, eat, scrap, bed, sleep, morning walk, eat, scrap, eat, scrap some more... All in all I had a wonderful time. It was a great opportunity to catch up on my projects, and basically do more scrapping than I had collectively done in the last 6 months! And I got to spend heaps of time with my mum. I will definately be going again next year. The comraderie, and happy vibe of a roomful of women all doing what they love was too, too enjoyable.

On blogging

I haven't written a post in a while. To be honest, I just don't think to do it. My day is filled with work, checking Twitter, surfing sites that make me smile like failbook and fmylife, and Facebook games during my breaks. I don't use the internet at home much. And I watch TV probably more than is healthy.

I used to blog a lot. Well, I used to post on Livejournal a lot. I'm not ENTIRELY sure that's the same thing. I always treated LJ as a sort of empty bucket into which to spill my thoughts. That was the least gross metaphor I could think of, y'all should be grateful…
So maybe that's why I made the transition to Twitter so successfully. I have so many random thoughts, it's the perfect recepticle. I don't often think long and hard about things. Or feel compelled to share these more in-depth thoughts with people.

That said, I have heaps to say about stuff. I think I've got to get out of the mindset of trying to make every blogpost 'interesting' or 'funny'. And just blog about life. And things. Because things are cool. And stuff. Stuff's good.