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Do you ever wonder what $390,000 can buy you? Apparently, it will get you a 10-year old 1300 square foot mobile home, detached 2 car garage, above ground pool, and a pole barn on 5 fenced acres. The neighborhood is a lovely patch of resurrected swamp land that will surely send you flocking to the beach in the summer just to get away from the mosquitoes.
Do I sound jaded yet? Keep reading. I checked the tax records for this piece of property and discovered that the seller purchased the property recently for $78,000. It gets better. The just market value is $208,000. We all know this person got a deal when they bought this. Hooray for them!
Do we ever learn? I’m all for capitalism and free trade, but when did free trade become synonymous with screwing other people? Don’t get me wrong…go ahead and make as much money as you possibly can. But be fair. Be just. Be reasonable. (This is why I could never sell time shares or be a pharmaceutical rep.) It breaks my heart that we all seem to sacrifice our humanity for cash.
What are these people thinking? Who in their right mind would even think of placing an offer on this property? I can’t help but think back to the Florida land boom of the 1920s. People bought property in Florida (often sight unseen) on the belief that the value would go up and they would become rich. Most of them lost their shirts. Is it ever enough?
Do you ever feel like your life is a movie? I hope so because I certainly do, complete with an occasional out-of-body experience and a soundtrack. Right now, I hear Journey in the background and see myself out running each morning, conquering the evil vacuum cleaner, and throwing away my old flannel shirt.
The last few days were interesting. My husband and I had few good fights…and lots of laughs. I can’t help but think they were related. I know they are. The fights were about establishing boundaries. We finished our budget for June and updated our to do list. At the end of the day, he was completing something he had to have done, and I was working on final edits for my book.
I’m really proud of us. We looked at our situation together, set some goals, and we reached them. I’m really proud of him, too. He’s the kind of man who doesn’t stop until he’s completed what he had in mind. I love that tenacity. I guess that’s what makes us a good match. I see the big picture and the end result, while he tends to the finer details and drags me along to the finish line.
I’m still stunned by this. I guess it is actually possible that doing something to take care of ourselves is the motivation we need to be productive. Now I have this fabulous image of myself conquering my world. Adios body fat! Ciao credit card debt! Good riddance lazy writer! We’re not there yet, but I feel hopeful.
My husband and I have had the same hand-me-down set of furniture since we married 7 years ago. I was thrilled to get it. At the time, we watched t.v. from the comfort of an air mattress. The big puffy upholstered furniture with it’s lavender and coral patches was a dream come true.
If that furniture could talk. It’s the place where my nephew slept during weekend visits and where he threw up in the middle of the night and my dear husband soldiered his way through cleaning up an erupting five year old. We snuggled there watching The Simpsons and Seinfeld and countless rented videos that we would later debate about. I’ve written my life story, graded papers, and written essays all from the comfort of the right-side corner. It’s been the stage for some bloody battles and dear conversations. Our infirmary when too sick to stay in the same bedroom for fear of spreading germs. Our therapy room in the wee hours of the morning. Our dining table during the Superbowl and 24 finales. It’s been sneezed on, farted on, cried on, jumped on. And it’s been through 3 different room decors. There’s a lot of life there.
I love my couch…with all it’s cat scratch marks, coffee stains, and butt impressions. It’s still the best seat in the house. I can’t imagine living my life in fear of scuff marks and food stains on my furniture. I lied. Yes, I can, especially when in the middle of consoling someone, I was told to please find somewhere else to sit so I wouldn’t spill anything on the couch. What’s the point of having a comfy place to sit at home if I can’t enjoy eating a bowl of chocolate pudding on it? For one thing, I have enough practice now to be able to eat a bowl of chocolate pudding without spilling it. For another, it’s just a freakin’ couch. This is why God created Scotchguard on the eighth day. He knew after watching us rest that we needed something to protect us from the ravages of livin’ it up.
Real life doesn’t happen in a museum. Life is messy…like chocolate ice cream on a summer afternoon. Sometimes it spills over to the furniture. And sometimes there are more important things to worry about than turning over the couch cushion to hide the punch stain.
Lately, I’ve been in the mood to clean. Not the “wipe down the bathroom counter with the towel I dried off with” kind of cleaning. I’m talking about the “pull everything out of the cupboards and change the shelf paper” kind of clean. So far I’ve emptied the desk in the guest room, rearranged the hall bathroom closet, cleaned up three kitchen cupboards, organized the cleaning supplies, and straightened the dining room buffet.
What has struck me most today is how much stuff we have. I’m not a pack rat by any stretch of the imagination. I have no use for gallon size Ziploc bags filled with old twist ties. I don’t reuse cottage cheese tubs (mostly because I can’t stand the thought of using a plastic tub that was growing mold in the refrigerator). My guest room is not a museum for my childhood toys. Basically, if I don’t see a use for something in the near future, we don’t need it.
That’s me. I married into a family that I sometimes swear grew up in the Depression. Here are some of the treasures that secretly found their final resting place in the trash can today: a broken glass candle holder, rusted containers of cleanser, 15 to 20-year old addresses of family members and friends, moldy rubber gloves, a 15-year old bottle of self-tanner, cracked taper candles, and a ripped shower mat. None of these are mine. All of these items are things I have tried to throw away before, but was met with the “but we might need it one day” protest…or it belongs to my in-laws who left it here at my house two and half years ago. Yes, I see how precious this stuff is.
Here’s my real quandary. Just how many glasses and plastic cups do we need? There are over 50 in my cupboard. What about vases? I have about 10 in various sizes. Table decorations? Polyester table cloths? Bottles of Resolve? I look around and see the excess—items I bought because they were pretty or I didn’t realize we already had because of the clutter. It’s a good feeling to get rid of the excess. It’s a really good feeling.
