For those of you following me, you knew how much I didn’t want to be present at my garage sale.  There wasn’t a choice.  My sister who was my stand-in needed to go to Orlando with her son for a baseball tournament.  The day went like this. Pray the forecast of 60% rain happened after 3:00 pm.  Up at 5:00 am and moved boxes from the garage to the many tables we had set up, get the signs up and hope like heck the many updates on Facebook and Craigslist were enough to bring the traffic.

The traffic came along with the haggling I dreaded most.  I know it’s part of the process but there were times I needed to bite my tongue.  For example, turntable Scrabble game asking $5, original price $30 plus, not a bad deal in my eyes.  A customer said that’s way too much money.  Really? It lingered pretty much the same way the rest of the day in weather hot enough to fry an egg.  I did pray for no rain, right?

3:00 p.m. came and we had to work on breaking down the tables and deciding what we were keeping for the last sale or box up for charity.  Much of it was boxed up and taken for a truck ride to charity.  We can now see half of our 2 1/2 car garage.  Yippee!  One of the people who helped us asked if we were having the sale Sunday as well.  “Hell no”, I said and guess what Sunday brought – rain!  Good decision on our part.

We are the type of people who generally do everything ourselves.  Not because we are cheap (even though we have saved money over time) but because we are pretty handy and enjoy the satisfaction once a job is done.  We bought this house as a fixer-upper.  We looked beyond the facade of what was there and envisioned what it could be.  As we had the funds, we ventured to create the home of our dreams little by little.  It only took twelve years but it was worth it.

Our self-imposed timeline brought us to the realization that in order to make it work, we needed help. Both of us work and my husband’s job takes him out of town every other week.  Not a lot of time of free time left.  Each time my husband said we need to do this, I cringed because I knew if we did it ourselves we would be pushing out the timeline beyond our due date.

We were lucky enough to know one of my son’s friends who is very versatile enabling him to tackle the many chores we needed to get done.  We felt comfortable having him in our home and knew the job would get done right.  He was our Godsend and now we are ready for next week’s garage sale and putting our home on the market.  We hired two girls to help us set us so we can be ready for our garage sale at 9:00 am.

Wish us luck next week and hopefully, we will be able to see the inside of our garage.  Each time we knock another task off the list it brings us closer to living in our RV.  Now, we ask the universe to bring us a buyer.

This weekend we celebrated my dad’s 81^st birthday.  How blessed am I to have him still in my life. It is interesting how people view getting older.  Some feel it is a negative event as each year marks another year of getting older, more aches and pains and the yearning to regain their long gone youth.  Yes, those are reactions that come with the territory but there is also another side to be viewed.

The half full people, like my Dad, revere it as a privilege.  There is something to be said for being able to see your children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren and be able to spend time with them.  If you are healthy, not in pain, have a good quality of life and can blow out the candles on a cake to celebrate your 81^st birthday consider yourself a winner of the lottery.

My son is a nurse in the cardiac ICU.  He often tells us about his patients and it always makes me sad when I hear of a person that has yet to fully live their life. None of us know how long we have on this earth.  It is up to each of us to make a conscious decision as to how we want to live it.  My choice is to be grateful for each year given to me to spend with those I love.

Will you take the path of celebration or grumble and be thankless for the year you have been given?  The choice is yours.

When selling items on the internet, one must prepare to be aggravated.  There are never-ending questions, inquiries that are already posted (seems no one reads the entire post) but the most frustrating is buyers who say they will be there and don’t show.  It is time-consuming, to say the least.

The one that cracks me up, are those folks who give you a thumbs up or a like on an item on Facebook.  Why even bother.  The other annoyance is those who show up but tell you they only have eight dollars for a ten dollar item.  Really???

On the positive side of selling on the internet, I must say I have met some really nice people.   There were several who touched my heart.  One person came and shared they had recently divorced and was starting over.  It seems the ex, fraudulently signed their name and ran up $100K in debt.  The house was foreclosed and to boot, the spouse turned and married the sister.

An older woman recently lost her husband and found herself having to face some tasks her husband normally did.  Then there was the person who had just gone through cancer and the medication they were on altered their wardrobe measurements to a different size.   Each of these individuals received a hug and an encouraging word from me.  Hopefully, I made their day a little bit brighter.  In return, they provided an introspection of everyone has their own struggles and challenges in life and we need to be kind to one another.

I believe people come into your life for however short the interaction, for a reason.  Sometimes it’s for them and other times it is for you.  When I met these individuals, I took time to reflect and to give gratitude for all the blessings in my life. I look forward to meeting more interesting people when we finally retire and hit the road and learning from them.