What I Learned This Week

First, if you are going to go on a cruise vacation, something that has never appealed to me because of the huge crowds of people involved and the fact that I get seasick easily, but if you are one of those people to whom a cruise sounds like the vacation of a lifetime, here are some things you should take along with you.

Survival rations. A backpack full of granola bars, water, and freeze dried food. A tent just in case you have to sleep out on the deck. Flashlights and extra batteries. Lots of hand sanitizer and wet wipes. And probably most importantly, a personal porta potty.

Seriously, besides the fact that I could never afford a cruise vacation despite my aversion to crowded places and riding around on boats in waves that make you sick, I don't think I'd ever ever go on a cruise after last weeks drama with all of those stranded passengers. And I'm sure there are a lot of other people out there who watched all that and came to the same conclusion.

Another thing both of us learned this week is to take care of medical issues while you still have insurance. Keith has had a cyst on his eyelid that's been there for a long long time and as it's gotten bigger, it's been bothering him more and more. Well, he finally decided to do something about it and had eyelid surgery yesterday, eyelid surgery that wasn't cheap and probably would have been covered at least in part by the insurance that we no longer have.

We could have gotten Cobra coverage, but Cobra coverage was over $1000 a month and when you are only bringing in $1600 a month on unemployment, it's kind of out of the question. Duh.

Keith is having a garage sale this morning, instead of working on the laundry closet doors for the past week like he was supposed to have been doing (you guessed it, the kitchen is still not finished) he was cleaning out his tools and decided to unload all of the tools and junk that he hasn't used in years and years. My thinking has always been that if something hasn't been used in a few years and you kind of forgot you even had it, time to get rid of that stuff, and maybe even make a buck or two as a bonus.

Other than deciding not to go on a cruise anytime soon and sitting in doctor's offices yesterday, and Keith out in the driveway today, we are still boring.

Another Weekend Gone By

And it was a busy one. And hot. We are having what is hopefully our last heat wave of the season, we are promised cooler weather by the end of the week. Poor Keith is really suffering at work, he comes home just exhausted and he's been having leg cramps and stomach troubles, all heat related I think. I told him to tell his boss that if he starts feeling sick he is going to have to wrap things up by about noon so he can get out of the sun and come home and cool off.

He did a yard sale on Saturday morning, which worked out really well because our next door neighbors were also doing a yard sale (yes, the lesbians) and they had lots of baby things out and clothes, so the women shopped at their sale and the men shopped at Keith's, which was all man type garage junk, and he made $175.00 selling JUNK! yay!

I did lots of errands on Saturday and had to park way down the street when I came back because the yard sales were so busy.

I've been working on new stuff for the shop and am feeling very inspired for a change and even got up at 6 today so I could get started on the cat box cleaning and vacuuming early, the sooner to get back in the workroom and get busy. I need to take a bunch of pictures and will start listing the new stuff later this week. I'm going to be offering the soldered glass pendants at a new low wholesale price and see if I can sell a bunch of those, I've also got some bigger glass for tree ornaments. It goes much faster using collage sheets than trying to make collages or find vintage pictures.

I'm also doing some chipboard pins with the resin coating again, I found some way fun collage sheets in one shop that will make great retro type pins and got some chipboard that is just perfect, easy to cut but still sturdy enough for a pin. I went out to Beverly Fabrics this weekend, I used to shop there all the time but since I don't sew anymore, haven't been there in probably 6 months. They did have a few things that I can't find closer to home so it was worth the trip across town.

Oh, and I am (finally!) getting new glasses! I went over to the Target Optical on Friday for my eye exam and ordered glasses and sunglasses. It was cheaper to get the 2 pairs than to get transitional lenses on the 1 pair, and the transitional lenses really don't get dark enough for driving and such and I still squint. It will be nice to be able to see close up again, I've noticed that things have been kind of blurry lately. The glasses weren't cheap, but I really needed them and really couldn't wait much longer, I've been having a lot of eye strain type headaches lately.

And that is about it, back to work!

Cats and Yard Sales

No, we didn't try to sell the cats at our yard sale today, but I did entertain that thought for a few minutes this morning.

First, we set ourselves back by over $200.00 by taking Bear and Pepper to the vet on Thursday for their annual check ups and shots. They are both very chubby kitties and weigh 15 pounds each. Chubby, indeed. Bear is very docile and didn't complain too much, she just hid her face in the crook of my arm while waiting in the exam room. Pepper, on the other hand, growled and snarled and in general was a big whiny baby. But, they got their shots that are good for another year, and only four more cats at $100.00 each to go this year. When we got home, Pepper went under the bookcase and stayed there the rest of the day and all day Friday, too. I think the shots made her not feel good, or she was just more pissed off than usual. I got a little worried Friday morning because she always comes running when she hears the cat food can pop open (that's partly why she's so chubby) but she didn't come running. I looked around and saw her under the bookcase and at first thought 'oh, crap, she died', and then my second thought was along the lines of 'gross, I don't want to have to pick up a dead cat', and then my third thought was 'oh, it looks like she is breathing, good, I really didn't want to have to pick up a dead cat'.

This is her pissed off cranky cat face:

So, with Pepper still breathing and feeling better today, we had our yard sale.

Well, driveway sale anyway. It was hot out there and I got all sweaty dragging stuff out of the house, so now I feel like I got sunstroke or something. We did make about $95.00 though, which isn't bad considering the average price was 50c or so. I had a lot of books out there and was wondering if they would sell, but quite a few went for 25c each. Can't beat that for a book!
And, while we were outside sweating, Mimi was inside having a party with her little fluff ball toy. These balls are like yarn pom poms and she loves them, but they leave little yarn pieces all over the house. There was almost nothing left of the original yarn ball by the time she got done today.

It doesn't look that bad here, but the entire living room was covered in little pieces of purple yarn ball.

Busy Yesterday and Yard Sale Score

I spent hours yesterday filling all the orders that came in from the link to the trashy books website. It was really kind of scary! I had over $400.00 in sales just from that link. Yikes!

I woke up early this morning and went outside to see a huge yard sale across the street and one down the street. We aren't much of yard sale type people, I really don't like buying other people's junk, I have enough junk of my own, thank you very much. But, when you can check out other people's junk just by crossing the street, then what the heck, right? So we grabbed our coffee and checked out the junk, then went down to the other junk down the street. And...a loveseat and chair for $40.00!!


We have been wanting to get a new sofa or something for our living room-the old one is totally worn out, where you need a crane to get you back out of it because our fat asses have sat on it so much that there is no support to the cushions anymore. The cats have shredded the upholstery and the new slipcover looks like its ten years old already from little cat claws snagging it. We also managed to get some black greasy stuff all over it-who knows where that came from.

The new (used) loveseat and chair are a little scratched up but they are comfortable and the cats are so happy that we bought them new scratching posts, so now we can wait another year or so before buying something brand new. And in the meantime saving that $1000 or so that a nice new scratching post, er, sofa, would cost.