Life is So-o-o Good

Life is so-o-o good!
I am still making my way through the jungle of junk.
My rental property was completely furnished....completely....kitchen stuff...linens.....toaster....coffee pot...everything....we even found a few items we would not touch. My new renters wanted an extended contract and they had all the furnishings they needed so all of that stuff had to be moved. For just a minute I considered starting a new "staging" business but nixed that quickly. Any business that involves moving furniture around from house to house is too much work for me.
While it is a relief to get a long lease contract the move was difficult.
Timing was difficult.

I never thought of myself as a pack rat really because when the kids were little I threw things out without even thinking twice about it....

"Yes, dear, you did get that at McDonald's but we will go again...."

"What are you looking for....hum-m.....don't know where that could be...."

"But honey, you had so many of those and you weren't using them."

"Your aunt who made what?"

....but as you age things you get are often things from your past like my grandparents sofa table that my grandfather used to stabilize himself while he sawed his boards for some project he was working on. The table still bears the scars from that day. I can see him standing there doing it. He was a great man. He has been gone since Caleb was born so there are few things left of him.

Then there is my grandmother's small table I can not part with. I have no memories of it but she gave it to me while she was in her nineties and I refinished it. And of course the bakers rack has to come home. Carl welded it for me and it is beautiful. But even if it were ugly it represents him and my heart melts when I think of him welding it together for me. Several of my big furniture pieces have been made or refinished by my dad so they must stay in the family.

The garage is packed with the boxes I had to bring back from the rental house. I will make it through the boxes one at a time until I can see the walls of the garage again. Anything garage sale worthy goes into big plastic containers to keep the little critters out or bigger critters.

Last night it was a raccoon going through the garage sale stuff. He has been a regular lately. He thought he had hit the jack pot when he found last falls pecans in buckets still being stored in the garage. He left his crumbs everywhere.

I long to see an empty garage.

I hear a car can be parked in there sometimes.

Jungle of Junk

I am refusing to rent a storage unit to organize/hide all my stuff.
If it has to be stored in a storage unit I don't really need it.
If I need it I want it close so I can find it.

I find that I am not alone in this jungle of junk. There are more garage sales going on every weekend than one could possible attend. Closets bursting open with so much stuff that if you tried to put one more thing in, the contents would topple outward into one big, huge, jumbled, heap into the room. The goal is to stop before it pours outward.

One of my chores this summer is to finalize my move out of my furnished rent house. Where did all this junk come from?

Sentimentalities, mementos, antiques, garden stuff, decorative items, and just plain things I could not do without. I even have saved all the gourds that had ever grown on my vines there for decorating.... like I did not have enough stuff to use to decorate. But I think it is so charming to use things from nature to decorate. And they were free.

Now two years later (today) I am bringing in things I have not even seen since I left there. Things I thought I needed but have not missed. And the worse part about it now is that as I try to combine the two houses now into one I see the stuff and still think I need it.

I have begun to nail things to the wall, rearrange things in closets, drawers and have even considered the attic in an attempt to get junk out of boxes and off the floor in an orderly fashion.

I have a garage sale pile, a pile for drawing props for school, things my kids must need and a little bitty pile called trash.

What does this say about me?
And I thought I was not materialistic.

Don't miss my garage sale now, you may find that one thing that will complete your decor!

Where'd You Get That Sense of Humor

We are made in His image.
We have a sense of humor.
So does God have a sense of humor?

I read Dana's blog and immediately recognized God's hand in the situation and saw the humor in it. It reminded me a situation I had just this week that I saw God's hand at play in my life.

I was neither in a bar nor watching people but I thought it a time that I saw God's sense of humor. Tell me if you agree.

It was after school and the only rush I felt was in that my car was sitting on empty and had binged the last three short trips I had made in town traveling only a mile or two at a time but now, I was pretty sure that this was the time that I could not push it off another minute therefore I headed to the gas pump instead of stopping in at Caleb's shop. Earlier in the day I had run to Subway, picked up a salad, used my debit card and had returned to school to finish cleaning out my room. Now tired from working at school, I felt a sense of exhilaration at the prospect of school ending. I sat at the pump and felt a rush of uneasiness because despite dumping out the entire contents of my purse into the seat of the car my debit card was gone. I looked twice but still did not find it.

Well, of course in a case as this who do I turn to....I said a quick,
"please, God help me find my debit card"......
"don't let it be stolen".......
as I turned my car around and headed to Subway's parking lot just a short distant down the road. I put the car in park and reached over to the seat next to me to begin to reload the contents of my purse which were now spread all over the passenger side seat cushion. As I picked up the first object, a calculator with a booklet like enclosure out dropped the debit card. I was stunned and in a split second I recalled a time when one of my children would play a hiding game with me and say, "ha ha! I tricked you".

I laughed and said aloud, "Funny! God!" before I said a quick thank you.