Auction Day

It was auction day here at the Old Storage Unit. Always an interesting time, I feel bad selling units that people have rented but there is not much you can do when they don't pay or respond to numerous letters. It is also a time of Storage Urban legends, Stories we here of the fantastical storage finds. The guy who paid a couple of hundred dollars for a unit filled with boxes only to discover a mint vintage Harley behind them all. (Les wants to find this one) Then there are the dead bodies found in trunk. The crying owners who show up to ask if they can have the ashes of their spouse and or pets even though someone else bought the unit. Have no clue if any of these actually happened. We do know that they found a rocket launcher in one in Dallas. They called homeland security. People tell us that the one thing they always seem to find is drug paraphenalia which is maybe the reason some of those people didn't pay for their stuff. I have only bought a couple in my life and that was before working for one. The best haul we ever made was a huge unit for 5.00. nobody wanted it because it was just too trashed and it certainly was that. Took 3 of us 8 hours to sort through what we were keeping and what we were throwing away. In the end though we made 1600 off the unit selling the stuff on eBay. So we were happy. But it does make you sad to think of why the people left the stuff in the first. Was there a divorce, A death? Why would you leave family pictures, your children's school mementos and 100 year old pieces of family history like letters and old religious items? I don't know but it is an interesting way to peek into other peoples lives even if a little sad.

Lydia reading your blogs is like looking into my own past and I feel for you in a lot of ways. Especially the time alone thing, although I will not get up at five for any reason short of a medical emergency I do get up at 7 while Les is usually still asleep to have an hour of peace with no one around. I spent years of my life being 20 pounds overweight and then some because I never took the time for me. When we lived in Anthony our shower was in the basement and I took to spending at least 2 hours there every morning. I would paint my nails, exercise read a book anything I wanted knowing that no one would come looking for me. It was heaven and over the course of 6 months I lost 20 pounds quit chewing on my fingernails and got over that 2 years of pre menopausal depression. I think women overlook time for themselves too much. We need it and it destroys us bit by bit if we don't have it. When we moved to Corpus I reversed completely put the 20 pounds back on and became again depressed. Finally I gave into my longing and started exercising again. There are only two forms of exercise that have ever worked for me, laying out in the sun for hours by myself. Don't know why it works but it does, maybe my body just decides it needs to look better in a swimsuit. The other is dancing to music. I am not a good dancer and I get bored with exercise videos but if I turn on the music video and do whatever exercise routine feels good at the time or just move in a random fashion I lose weight. The problem was who had time to lay out in the sun that much and I was way to self conscious to free dance in the living room with the husband and kids in the house. Luckily I got over it. I learned that if undress and turn on loud music and dance they all go in another room and ignore me until I am done and dressed again. Of course now that there are no kids at home I do occasionally get groped when doing this which is kinda fun to. I have now lost the 20 pounds I gained when I moved here and am working on losing another 38. I currently weigh 10 pounds more than I did when I had April and seeing as how she is old enough to have a baby of her own I can't exactly blame it on her. Made les promise before I started on this Odyssey that he would take me out dancing if I made it back down to 110. He agreed believing it would never happen. But I am determined and a few more years of morning dancing and I should be there.

Reading your blog about schooling I couldn't find a single good reason in there to keep your kids in school other than the fact that you are afraid you will fail them if you homeschool. I don't think that is even remotely possible. But reading about it made me realize all those reasons I did homeschool and as scary as it was I wouldn't trade it for the world. I think the biggest misconception people have about homeschool is that the teachers are the parents and therefore responsible for their children's learning. The idea behind homeschooling is that the children take responsibility for their own educations you merely provide the materials and experiences they desire to learn about. This is as simple as always being there to help them research their own answers, taking the to the library or museum. I always told my children that if they decided they did not want to learn and chose to grow up stupid that it would not hurt my paycheck or my life but it would hurt theirs. Even Mishys children who went back to school at Garys insistence gained more independence from home schooling than they ever would of at School and considering Jett her oldest at 18 made more than twice my salary last year running his own business I can't see where it hurt them. Josh my oldest who doesn't have a diploma of any sort and declared himself done at 17 makes 17 bucks an hour at 23 years of age doing repairs on electronic wheelchairs and he never had an electronics class in his life. Hell I still think electricity is magic, so I know he didn't get it from me.
Take the plunge you will find you have more time with them around than you do ferrying them everywhere and you will like them even more than you do now.