Amongst the idiots, good people dwell

Well, after much irritation and many false starts, I finally sold Master J's bunk beds last night. I've had them out on Craigslist since Sunday night after we got back from Thanksgiving in La-La Land. I've had at least five people that e-mailed saying they wanted them and asking for my address. After giving my address and phone number, not one of them showed up. I can't tell you how many people e-mailed to ask if I still had them and when I said "yes", they disappeared back into the underbelly of Craigslist. Damned poll takers! What is the point of asking if I have something if you're not interested in buying it? That makes no sense to me. Anyway, I got a really nice e-mail from a lady saying it was exactly what she was looking for and asking if I would be willing to wait until Friday night for her and her husband to pick it up. Having no other viable offers, I of course said I would. She had given her phone number in her email so I called and left a message with her and gave her my number. She actually called back (that was unexpected!) and sounded very excited. About two hours later, she called back again to ask if she could come last night instead. I of course said yes again. Then she called a third time to tell me that they were on the way. They drove an hour and a half to get to my house. They never tried to talk me down on price and they were so excited about the beds and the bedding I was selling with it that I almost felt guilty for selling it to them. They were the kind of people you want to live next door to because they were funny, sweet and easy to talk to. I had a bunch of other stuff that I had planned to take to Goodwill but after I spoke to her the third time I went out and sorted it out. I set aside the clothes I thought would fit her boys and offered them to them when they arrived. I also offered her all my kid sized hangers and some other random things that Master J had outgrown. She took what would work for them and said how amazing it was that everything that they needed, we had. I say some people restore your faith in humanity and sometimes we're blessed enough to come in contact with them as a reminder.

Wonder what's in this box?

I have spent the past two days unpacking boxes. Well, that's not entirely true. I spent about six hours on Wednesday playing "All My Stuff Bingo". The game goes like this: A moving truck pulls up in front of the house and the boss lady hands you a pen, a clipboard and a piece of paper with the numbers 1 - whatever in little boxes. In my case, the "whatever" was 292. Then, as the the guys are taking stuff off the big truck, they holler out random numbers that fall in the range on the paper and you put an x on that number. Sometimes, two different guys call out the same number five minutes apart and you get to figure out why your number already has an x on it. Sometimes you need to use the little girl's room and when you come back seven number have been called and nobody remembers what they were. When the truck is empty, you look at your paper and realize that a bunch of numbers don't have an x on them. Then your job is to search frantically through the house to find items with one of those numbers stuck to it. These items are usually listed in the bill of lading as "Box - brown, square". It's very helpful that way. At the end of the day, when all your numbers have an x on them, your prize it that all of your crap made it to it's final destination. In that respect, I got a "Bingo". As the movers made their way to their respective vehicles yesterday, they all said kind and helpful things such as "Your work is just beginning, hee, hee!" I still tipped them in spite of that.

Once they left I started opening boxes. Mom was over and she helped me put Master J's room together. Let's just say the boy could never get another toy his entire childhood and he shouldn't ever get bored. In our previous house, he had a playroom for all of his stuff. Not so much here. In our previous house, we had a full basement. Again, not so much here. But we did manage to get most of it put away. I also managed to get my bedroom into some semblance of order as well. The closet is still a huge mess, but the bedroom itself doesn't look half bad. Today I focused on the kitchen. As of 11:00 tonight, I would estimate it at about 95% done. My kitchen table is clear and usable. My breakfast bar is clear and usable. Most of my counter tops are clear. There are no unopened boxes in this room. I had help in the form of Mom again which was nice. Mostly she took care of Master J for me. Did I forget to mention that he was home with a fever, sore throat and headache? Yeah, just in time for the unpacking, he turns up with illness. When Master J is truly sick, you never hear a word out of him so it was really pretty quiet today.

In the midst of all of the unpacking I had Mister C calling me from our previous town where he was sitting at a title company signing the paperwork to sell our house and buy our buyer's house. We are now officially landlords. I have great hope that this will work out for us and our soon to be renter. I have to say it's a little bit scary to be kind of hanging out there financially, hoping that some guy we've never met sends us money every month. This is where I have to have faith and trust that what we're doing is the right thing and that we're doing it for the right reasons. And that the adage about no good deed going unpunished isn't true in this case.

I'm on a break. I NEED a break!

I've been packing for days. It seems like years. And yet I look around and I think "Holy Mother of all that is good, have I done ANYTHING?" I'm totally done with exactly two rooms, mostly done with three rooms, sorta done with one room and barely started on the remaining. How is that possible? Today for example, if I account for the two hours of phone calls, I've still spent at least 8 hours packing and I can barely tell the difference. What I am noticing is all the damage I'm uncovering as I'm removing things from each room. How does a house get so beat up in 18 months? Crud. I struggle with the desire to fix the small dents and dings because I know that the next owners will just be painting over my fixes anyway. Besides, we've just about paid them to take the house off our hands and I'd hate to waste any more of my time and effort. Well, I need to fix Master J his dinner before going back to the packing, so I guess my break is over.