Category Archives: miscellaneous

miscellaneous, Writing

To Journal or Not

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Physical decluttering/disaccumulation of our stuff has stalled. I probably need to renew some of my Facebook listings to see if anyone is out there who wants something I know we want to get rid of. Plus, there are more things in the house that should be easy to make the decision on. Maybe I can get that effort un-stalled.

But the last few days have been full of physical activity. A friend has come to harvest oak trees cut down by the electric co-op about a year ago. I wanted to help him, as there is some real labor involved. We worked on that Wednesday afternoon and Thursday morning. That kind of work (lifting trees, moving 16″ sections uphill, rolling them into the trailer) sends you back into the house exhausted. At least it did me, and I did less of the work than my friend did. Soon I’ll be cleaning up the residual items on the adjacent lots. For sure I had no energy for clean-up tasks after that.

My time has also been much taken up working on our church’s 100th anniversary book. This week I’ve been working about five or six hours a day on it. It’s enjoyable, but it drains you of thinking energy, and decluttering/disaccumulation is perhaps more thinking than physical labor.

Meanwhile, I’ve been doing some electronic decluttering. That includes:

  • Going through files on my computer, uploading them to OneDrive, getting rid of duplicate files. That may not sound like much, but my files are much more organized than they were a couple of months ago.
  • Going through e-mails, deleting what I can, moving them from inbox/outbox to proper folders, saving some out as Word documents—to the right folders, of course—so that some day I can put my “collected letters” together. This I do mostly in the evenings while watching TV.
  • Pulling out flash drives, seeing what’s on them, and putting them into a physical place with a TOC so that I can find them again and know what’s on each.

In this process, I found various attempts at journaling in electronic format. I found at least eight, maybe as many as ten, files that were journals. Some were a single day, some a few days, one was fairly comprehensive for nine months of 2005.

Journaling is a time-honored way of documenting your life, work, and aspirations. John Wesley did it and published his journals. Emerson and Thoreau both did it and their journals are published. Carlyle did it, though his have never been published. Many others have done it. Life coaches recommend it. Writing gurus recommend it for writers.

In addition to the electronic journals, I have a fair number of handwritten sheets with journal entries. And I have one or two notebooks with journal-type entries in them. I’m close to filling one of those books, which is a slow process at an entry every few weeks.

I haven’t assessed how much the handwritten material amounts to. But I saved all the electronic files to one folder, then merged them together, finishing that process yesterday. After going through the merged file to remove duplicates, the combined journal comes to 18,600 words and 27 single spaced.

That’s not very long. It’s not a publishable document. I haven’t checked it to see if the writing is any good. I suppose I will do that in the next month or two. And I’ll take a look at all my handwritten sheets and books and try to get a handle on just how much material there is. This will give me a sense of decluttering, though not of disaccumulation.

But what about the idea of journaling? Those times I’ve started to journal, I found it difficult to keep up with. I start, but end fairly quickly. Handwritten journals are for sure harder than typed. But that may make them more valuable, more succinct, less verbose. Those who recommend journaling say it helps you when you go back years later and read where you were years ago. For that to work, you would have to be specific and to a level of detail that will help your future self.

I think I’m rambling now. While gathering the journal files together in the name of electronic decluttering, and gathering paper journals together in the name of physical decluttering will be good for the computer and house, and for my psyche, I’m not about to start journaling in a big way. I’ll finish out the two or three pages left in the journal book I’m in right now, but I’m not going to do a lot more.

Thinking about journals have kind of spurred my interest in reading journals. Years ago I began reading David Brainard’s journal, but left off with maybe 50 pages to go. Once I finish my current reads, I may just pull that out, finish it, and put it up for sale. Hey, disaccumulation!

Christianity, miscellaneous

Harmony In Music And Life

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Harmony is an amazing part of music. Wish it were in life as well.

Last Sunday, our church held what we call a celebration Sunday. That’s when we celebrate milestones in the church: baby dedications, baptisms, new church members, and the like. We tend to do this once a quarter. On this particular celebration Sunday, our Hispanic congregation worshiped with us. The worship team included people from both congregations. We sang familiar choruses and alternated between English and Spanish words. On one song we sang bilingually on the chorus. I attended the first service; most of our Hispanic congregation would attend the second service.

I’ve been in church services before with bilingual singing. In Schaffhausen Switzerland we attended church at our European Bible college, and all the singing was in German and English. In Hong Kong, up on the 21st floor of a high rise, at our Nazarene church, all the singing was simultaneously in Cantonese, English, and Tagalog. Both those times it wasn’t too hard to sing in your language so long as you really concentrated.

I must admit to having trouble singing in Spanish. Actually, I haven’t been singing much since returning to in-person church last September. Having the mask on restricts breathing for me, my face under the mask gets very hot, and so I don’t sing much at all. Also, they have been doing songs and choruses that I don’t know. I can usually pick up a tune easily, but some of these new ones I found very difficult to pick up. So I stand in reverence, may sing a little on a song I know, but otherwise remain quiet. On this day, with familiar songs, I tried to sing a little on the Spanish portions, but I just couldn’t get the words to fit the music, so I remained silent.

Then, I think it was on the second song, at some point the instruments went mostly silent and the singers sang. It was during one of the Spanish verses. The harmony coming from the worship team was beautiful. Since I knew the song, I knew what was being sung even though I couldn’t sing in Spanish.

Oh, but the harmony! How beautiful it was. I listened closely. The effect was the same as harmony in English. I remember years ago, during a choir practice near the Christmas season, we sang “Away In A Manger” for practice and the choir director had us all sing, without any score before us, and told us to sing in harmony. I hadn’t memorized the tenor part to the song, so I did the best I could to be a third above the lead, perhaps doing a little differently at some places as I thought would sound good. We did one verse like this, and the effect was wonderful. The choir director praised us. I think we did it again, but it wasn’t as beautiful the second time. The spontaneous harmony, without a printed score, with singers who knew how to sing and blend, was the best.

This got me to thinking about harmony versus melody, lead versus support, my own language versus another. The effect of harmony on me was the same in both English and Spanish. In fact, I might almost say it was greater in Spanish because, instead of concentrating on the words I was concentrating on listening to the tones—or maybe I should say tone, because a beautiful harmony calls attention to the whole rather than the parts.

It kind of happened unexpectedly. I didn’t think to myself, “Oh, I can’t sing here so let me just see how well they do with harmony.” No, I was silent, and it happened. The lead singer was singing the familiar song in Spanish, but I wasn’t hearing the lead except as its share of the harmony sound. I couldn’t listen to what words were being sung since I didn’t understand them. No, I just soaked up the harmony.

Maybe it can be that way in life, in families, in politics, among nations. Yes, someone’s got to be singing lead, but when the harmony is working right, who’s singing and what they are singing and what language they are singing in is almost inconsequential. The harmony is beautiful.

Now, I know nations don’t tend to harmonize. There seems to be no harmony in politics. In fact, life and families often don’t harmonize. How beautiful it would be if they did, however. Everyone is concerned with singing the melody, the lead, not wanting to play a supporting role, as those singing harmony parts do. So every politician is singing lead, there are no supporting voices, and the result is cacophony.  Sadly, this can also happen within the family.

I’ll continue to dream that widespread harmony in all areas of life would be a reality. That the discordance that comes from too many singing lead would yield the wonderful harmony of working together. One of my dreams.

Here’s a link to one of the songs from the service.

Health, home improvements, miscellaneous, The Teachings

Getting Things Done – Latest Edition

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Thursday’s work was stump grinding from our front yard. Looks like they did a good job.

More than once I’ve posted about getting things done. I usually keep a to-do list, which I try to work through. From time to time I slack off from the list, but somehow that doesn’t reduce the amount of things needing to get done. I’m a little late with my post this morning because of getting things done. In fact, it’s likely to take me over an hour to write and post this because I still have other things to get done that are on a time schedule.

Today’s work is pressure washing the north wall and some other minor repairs. It’s going well. Just wish they had brought their long ladder.

How far back do I go? For over a year my wife has asked me to have her sewing machine looked at, but pandemic related closings and restrictions caused me to keep putting this off. Plus, the repair shop is 18 miles away, and I don’t generally drive 18 miles for a single purpose trip. But Wednesday of last week I was in Rogers for something else and could divert to the store with very little distance added. I did so and dropped the machine off. When there, they said they needed a bobbin for the machine and there was none in it. Once home I got the bobbin ready to mail. But when I took it to the P.O. I learned it was too thick to be considered a letter and would cost $4 to mail as a small parcel. I knew I would be in Rogers again this week, so I just made the slight diversion again and dropped that at the sewing shop. Now we wait for the repairs. Check off the item on the to-do list.

It’s a little hard to see in this photo, but the area to the right is weeded; to the left is not. I think this work is keeping me young and agile. At least a little more so.

Last Saturday I received a message about someone wanting to buy some of my wife’s paperback romance novels I had listed on Facebook Market place. The problem was she lived too far away to come by and get them, would I ship them and how much would it cost? I replied immediately and transitioned into salesman mode. I told her yes, I would ship them, but had many more available that weren’t mentioned in the Marketplace listing. I’ll shorten this story. We had 203 romances to sell and she wanted them all. I took them to the P.O. on Monday to weight for a shipping estimate, received payment via PayPal on Tuesday, and took the books to the P.O. in the mini-snowstorm the same day. They are now in USPS hands, “winging” their way to her. Check one item off the to-do list.

Also P.O. related, on Monday I mailed a nice group of greeting cards to the daughter of a first cousin. These are cards found in my dad’s house at his death in 1997. He kept all incoming greeting cards, and even had some that went to his father. I’ve slowly gone through them and sent them back to the families from whence they came. I contacted this cousin and she would like the cards from her grandfather, mother, and aunt. Mailed them on Monday; check one item off the to-do list.

On Tuesday, while waiting at the doctor’s office, I finally called our electrical cooperative to ask why they had never come back to grind the stumps left from when they took trees out of my front yard in December 2019 and January 2020. A different crew was supposed to come a few days after the last tree was down, but they never did. I kept finding the card for the vegetation management guy, then losing it, then finding it. The last time I found it I put it where I could pick it up easily, did so as I went out to the doc. The co-op was very apologetic, the man came out that day, and the crew arrived Thursday late-morning to do the work. They were done by 1:30 p.m., and the yard looks good. Check another item off the to-do list.

Everything above in this post I wrote over two hours ago, almost three.  I interrupted first for doing my stock market work, which is busy on Friday. Then the work crew came that is doing some siding maintenance and repair on our metal siding. Spending our stimulus money. Since I was outside lining them out, I did my yardwork, a little more than usual. Now, I’m back in The Dungeon, typing away.

I have two books to work on, but haven’t done much this week other than research, as these other tasks distracted me too much. But, really, there was one big task that was the most distracting: publishing The Teachings. Sunday (or maybe it was Monday; the days are running together) I published the e-book. I haven’t made an announcement as I wanted to get the print book published then start promoting it. But, the cover designer, who did a super job on the e-book cover, is busy with her college work and is a little delayed. That’s no fault on her; sometimes the timing of a project isn’t good.

Not bad as a placeholder. Just waiting on Amazon’s human review. It already passed the automatic review.

I decided I would try to pull it together, using the e-book cover and using G.I.M.P. Readers of this blog know that I hate G.I.M.P. Yesterday morning I decided I would just knuckle down and get it done, and I did. Today I uploaded the interior file and the cover. Amazon accepted them for human review without any problems—meaning I must have figured out the mechanics of using G.I.M.P. for creating print covers—and now I wait. My cover is a placeholder. When the cover designer’s schedule frees-up, I’ll have her do the real one. Meanwhile, the book will be available both as an e-book and print book.

So here it is, 12:17 p.m., and I’m finally coming to the end of this post. Maybe next week will have fewer things on the to-do-list. You think?

home improvements, miscellaneous

The View From The Sunroom

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Dateline March 31, 2021

Or you read in sunroom and watch the Christmas cacti  still bloom rather late in the season.

I went out to pull weeds this morning, but I came inside because it was too cold, so I decided to come inside and spend more time in the sunroom, reading. I’m working my way through the essays of E.B. White, an old paperback that I will dispose of when I finish with it. The essays are interesting, but I’ve been making slow progress on them, mainly due to other events.

The downy woodpecker seems to be here in all seasons.

After reading an essay, I grabbed the book of poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay and read a few pages. I’m making slow progress on it too. I then picked up an old edition of a diabetes magazine, intending to zip through it and then dispose of it. Before reading in it I looked up and saw a downy woodpecker come to our empty bird feeders on the deck. I saw that three or four days ago but didn’t fill them right away. So I laid the magazine aside, took five minutes (maybe less) to fill them, then came back to the sunroom to read.

Now, from my reading chair in the sunroom when positioned in its winter orientation, I look right out a window at the bird feeders. As soon as I sat, I saw a tufted titmouse at the railing, where I scattered some old thistle seed. That didn’t please him, apparently, for he went right up to the feeder with the sunflower chips. But he didn’t take any, instead going to the feeder with the black oil sunflower seeds. There he ate. He took one and flew away. In less than a minute he was back, took another, and left again. This repeated for more than five minutes with no other birds coming.

I’m not sure what type of plants these were. They were big, and my wife said they took a lot of care. I balked at first when she wanted to sell them, as they’ve been companions in the sunroom. But then I thought, I don’t want to dampen her notion of getting rid of stuff. So off they went, hopefully to a good home.

Obviously, I don’t know that it was the same bird. Five or six tufted titmouses could have come to the feeder. It took almost ten minutes before a chickadee showed up, then a second. I tried to get back to my magazine, but first had to look around the room. In the spirit of decluttering/disaccumulation, the room is less crowded than it used to be. Last September, when we started de/dis, my wife said she wanted to sell three large plants in the room. I balked at this at first, as the plants in the sunroom are my friends, giving me oxygen as I sit and read there. Then I thought, there are about fifteen other plans in the room, I guess we could do without those three. They sold right away when I listed them on FB Marketplace.

Last month I decided to list the four antique chairs that came from my grandmother’s house. They were in rough shape, the sort of thing you keep with the idea of refurbishing it at some point. I thought, will I or the wife ever get around to refurbishing these? Two are cane-bottom chairs with the cane needing work, something you would have to pay for. So I listed them and they sold right away.

The bluebirds have been around, but I haven’t seen another bunting like this one.

The sad thing is, with these things gone, you can’t tell that the room is in any sense empty. Two older easy chairs, a table, a patio furniture set, two old microwave tables, a tall plant stand, a couple of small tables, an old three-tier table, a magazine rack, some folding chairs, and plants sitting on every flat surface made the room seem nicely furnished, almost crowded even. It doesn’t look like a room that is being cleaned out by someone who is thinking of downsizing. I guess that tells you how much work we still have.

I got back to the magazine and went through about 25 pages. Half of those were ads for medicines or medical devices or food companies. But I read four good articles, one that included information I didn’t know before.

My quiet reading time ended all too soon as my lunch time arrived. I got up and went into the house. I didn’t say goodbye to the plants as I left. I shot a glance at the bird feeder and saw a chickadee and a titmouse fly away. The downy woodpecker must not have received the memo about the feeders being restocked. I’m sure I’ll see him again before too many days pass. E.B. White will still speak to me for another five or seven sitting to finish the 71 pages left, and Edna will see me again before long. For now, it’s on to other responsibilities and passions in other venues.

miscellaneous, The Teachings, Writing

The View From The Dungeon

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Clouds have obscured the bright sun disk of early morning.

The windows in The Dungeon face east, and that’s the direction I face when sitting and working at my computer. On sunny days like today I will be greeted by the sun. Since we are not far from solstice, the sun, as it frees itself from the horizon, comes blazing through the windows into my eyes. I have to adjust myself in the chair, lean a little to the left, so that the sun is blocked. Otherwise, I’m sure my eyes would become painful and eventually I’d go blind. Oh, the windows have blinds, long vertical slats that go to the floor (well below the window bottoms), but the tangle of computer cords causes the slats to separate and allow the bright rays to come in.

This condition lasts only a few minutes. The sun rises above the cut-out at the back of the upper unit of my computer desk, and the sun no longer torments me. I can shift my torso back to upright. At some point this spring/summer the sun will rise early enough that perhaps it will already be above the critical point when I arrive in The Dungeon to start my workday. But, by then other conditions will have changed as well.

Right now, the woods behind our house are at or just past their barest point. The Bradford pears have bloomed and just leafed out. The wild dogwoods are blooming. The oaks are a couple of weeks away from their initial budding. But, the pin oak trees among them have finally lost their leaves. Yes, those pin oak leaves hold on through the winter, dropping in the early spring just before everything else starts to bud. Once the oaks do bud then leaf out, the sun will be totally blocked until it is well up above that desk cut-out. I will come to The Dungeon when it is lighter and not be bothered by the sun.

With the solar disk so bright, and with the windows so dirty, and with the slats blocking much of what would otherwise be visible, what do I see? Bare oak branches show from the nearest trees, and behind them the mass of trees on the other side of the hollow. They are, perhaps, seven hundred feet away. If I would stand up and find a good viewport through the windows I might just barely see thy walking/hiking/biking trail, in the hollow. I walk that trail a fair amount and, until the oak forest leafs out, can see our house from it.

You wonder what the point of this post is. I’m not sure I have one. Just thought I’d take a post now and then to record something of interest. The hollow behind our house is unplatted land, belonging to the POA. It is considered unbuildable due to the steep slopes. However, if hard times would come, I’m sure the POA would figure out a way to build on it and homes would spring up. Given the nature of the geology, it would have to be very hard times indeed. So, we are destined to have a wooded valley behind us for as long as we stay here.

It is now just after 10 a.m. The sun has moved higher and way around to the right. It no longer bothers me or causes me to dodge and weave to avoid looking directly at it. The eastern sky, what little I can see of it, appears cloudy. The tree trunks at the edge of the forest aren’t bright. It would appear that cloudy conditions are developing.

The day is starting to drag. I’ve been looking for maps to illustrate my novel and am having trouble finding suitable ones. Before much more looking passes I’ll just break down and draw my own.  My cold is better, but I think I need one more day before I resume walking. Friday is April 2, Good Friday. It will be the day for me to post my progress and plans for the month. I’ll see you all then.

memories, miscellaneous

R.I.P. Victor Turnage

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The corona virus pandemic may be in its waning moments (can’t be sure yet), but it has claimed the life of a good friend, Vic Turnage.

About five months or so into the corona virus pandemic I began seeing social media posts to the effect “Do you know anyone who has had covid? Do you know anyone who has died from covid?” The implication, of course, was that this disease wasn’t so bad and was being blown way out of proportion by individuals in the government who wanted more control over our lives. The longer we got into the pandemic you saw fewer of such posts as more as more people caught it and more and more died. Yes, it was then and still is a serious disease, worthy of being treated seriously.

For Lynda and me, an acquaintance in our daughter’s church died from it last spring/summer. Then, on Saturday a second person we know, Victor Turnage, died from it after a long battle in the hospital. He leaves his wife, Joyce, two sons, and four grandchildren.

They came to the Northwest Arkansas around 1995 or 96 from central Missouri. Vic worked then for Contractor Supply. They lived in Bentonville and began attending our church. Within the first week or two we had them over for dinner after church and we hit it off as good friends. Vic is about my age, was involved in construction, was interested in serving in the church, and so we had much in common. We went out for lunch often after church and were frequently in each other’s homes in evenings to play table games.

Such good people and hard workers. Vic will never be replaced as a husband, father, grandfather, and servant of God through the church.

When the church put together a building committee to construct a new family life center, Vic and I were both on it. We worked together on closing out things in the old church, on working with the architect as he developed concepts. Once construction started, Vic was our eyes and ears in daily dealing with the contractor. His knowledge of how construction took place was invaluable during that time. He and I and some others conducted the final inspection of the new building. Together we looked for those nicks and dings and bigger items that the contractor might have overlooked.

Later, he came to work where I worked, CEI Engineering, as a construction observer. He and I worked together on getting contractors to do the right thing on various development and public works projects. Vic wasn’t much on paperwork. which drove me nuts. I had to keep after him to fill out daily reports. But he sure knew construction, knew his way around a job site, knew how to handle contractors, make them follow the construction plans. The local business slowdown hit NW Arkansas in 2006, ahead of the rest of the country, and Vic was laid off by our company the next year.

After that, we kind of drifted apart. Life circumstances resulted in our having different goals and going in different directions in life. We saw each other at church, but Lynda and I stopped going out to eat due to salary cuts. Eventually we quit the evening get-togethers.  Whenever we did get together it was good times as always. During these later years, Vic was heavily involved in physical needs at the church. He ran cables, worked the sound booth, maintained just about anything and everything inside the buildings and on the grounds. He was the guy you would see bring a new microphone to the platform in the middle of a church service when the pastor’s mic died. When someone needed to climb a ladder to push the reset button on the ceiling-mounted projector, Vic would be the one to climb, as five of us down below would steady the ladder and encourage him.

The last paragraph really understates all that Vic did for the church. He truly had a servant’s heart and followed that up with action. If he saw a need he moved to fulfill it. He didn’t need to be asked. Yet, if you did ask him for anything he would do it. He had the gifts of both serving and helping.

Vic will be much missed by many people. We mourn, along with his family. What will help all who do mourn him is knowing that Vic has now heard those words from his heavenly Father that we all long to hear: “Well done, good and faithful servant. Enter now into the joy of the Lord.”

miscellaneous, research, Writing

I Should Have Written a Better Post Today

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This morning, on the Presidents Day holiday, I was up as always around 6:30 a.m. With no stock market work to do, I decided to download income tax forms and organize the folders and files. Still waiting on one critical income form so I can’t quite start on them in earnest.

The last forecast before the snow began was for 3-6 inches. We got 5, though it took 33 hours of light snowing to for that much to accumulate.

After that I shifted to work on the church 100th anniversary book. I like the progress I made. I’m researching charter members. Wrote the short bio of the one who organized the tent meeting that got it all started then began researching another family of charter members. That took me up to noon or later.

Then it was reading time. After lunch it was reading time, walking time, and phone call time. Now here it is, almost supper time, and I’m just getting around to a post. My only excuse is: the snow made me do it.

Yes, another day, another snow storm. It started around 8 a.m. yesterday and is just about now quitting. In those 33 hours we have had only 5 inches. I went out in it around 2 p.m. Walked about 1/4 mile out and was so cold, even with several layers on, I turned around and came back. I love walking in the snow, but thought I’d better not push it in this bitter cold.

But all day, from The Dungeon window, the sunroom windows, from my reading chair in the living room, and wherever else I was, the snow captivated me enough that I couldn’t concentrate on blogging. The important post I’ve been putting off is still important, but not so timely as when I first envisioned it. I may start a draft of it tonight, after dark, because if it’s snow that distracts me…

…The current forecast is for another storm to start tomorrow evening and rage into Wednesday, giving us another 4-10 inches. Well, the latest forecast has it 4-9 inches. I don’t want to exaggerate. Tomorrow I’ll have to shovel the driveway. Not because we are going anywhere, but shoveling 4 inches twice will be a whole lot easier than shoveling 8 to 10 inches or more once.

Snow exhilarates me. I don’t even mind the cold so much. Hopefully despite the flakey distraction I’ll be able to get my work done.

C.S. Lewis, Church History Novels, home improvements, miscellaneous, Politics, reading, The Teachings, Writing

A Whacky Week to Start 2021

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That sounds too flippant, to call last week a “whacky” week. It was an awful week as far as our nation goes. For me in my personal life, “whacky” is an apt description.

Not that anything went wrong, at least not terribly wrong. The worst that happened to me was a dead battery. I drove to a haircut appointment on Friday, the first haircut I had since May. I took the Green Monster, our old minivan. It’s been a little hard to start and I thought it might be that the battery was old. But it started and I drove it the 3/4 miles to the beauty shop. Got my haircut, came out, and it wouldn’t start. So I walked home and let it sit overnight.

I considered having my neighbor drive me up there and jump start me then drive it to the Dodge dealership 4 miles north, but on Saturday? I decided instead to call AAA. They now have a battery service. I requested that, and they came so fast I barely had time to walk up there to meet them. Fifteen minutes and some money later and I was up and running. That battery was six or seven years old, so I was on borrowed time with it. And, that service didn’t cost a whole lot more than going to Wal-Mart, buying a battery, and putting it in myself.

During the week I actually got back to significant work on my novel, The Teachings. Over Tuesday through Friday I added over 5,000 words to it. I haven’t had that kind of writing production in a long time. I left it on Friday with the next scene clearly in my mind, hoping to add another two to three thousand words over the weekend. But instead I added…nothing. Other tasks consumed my time.

On Saturday, in addition to taking care of the van, I did maintenance around the house. The shower door handle needed attention, and was easily fixed. I tried to glue down some old wallpaper that is coming loose but it wouldn’t stick, even with gorilla glue. A window handle needed put back in place, and I was able to find screws that reasonably matched and got that done. While at it I went around the house and checked the other window handles, tightening a few. I also did some more straightening/arranging of my miscellaneous hardware, and identified some more I can sell.

We continue with decluttering, going through old Christmas cards and letters received over a 28 year period. Few are worth saving. Why we saved them I don’t know. But that is slowly being cleared out. I keep getting some inquiries about items I have listed for sale on FB Marketplace. Sold some books on Thursday, but a freak snowstorm that day kept two other scheduled buyers away or I might have sold more.

My reading was progressing well early in the week. I read ten or more pages a day in C.S. Lewis’s letters, with great enjoyment. But I read less over the weekend, my concentration waning. Our evening reading is in a Philip Yancey book, and we make good progress in that. We lost reading time two days as I had evening Zoom meetings on church-related tasks.

One of those tasks is our church’s 100th anniversary committee. I was asked if I would write a book to be distributed as part of the celebration, which is in October. That may seem like a lot of time, but it’s not. Thursday evening I went up to the church to retrieve the archives. Saturday I went through about 5 to 10% of them. It’s going to be a huge task. I have a timeline already started, though with much more needed. I probably need to spend some time every day on this, and will do some today.

My weight and blood sugars were a little whacky last week. My eating was fairly good and I lost some weight and had good blood sugars, but the blood sugars didn’t track as well to my eating and exercise as I thought they would; not sure why.

I could go on. Prepared on Saturday for and taught adult Life Group yesterday. Did a little genealogy research. And, as you would expect, made a few Facebook posts or comments on Wednesday, now estranged from a family member over it. This too shall pass. I will post about that, maybe in my next post of possibly not until next week. While I’m hoping the madness (yes, I consider it madness) has stopped, I’m hearing things that concern me that it hasn’t. More on that later.

So, here it is another week, the 2nd of 2021. Normal tasks are before me. God is on the throne. I will continue to serve Him, regardless of what of what swirls around me.

miscellaneous

Still Not Much Free Time

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Hey folks. As I stated in my last post, my time has been consumed with the garage sale and downsizing activities. Then we will have company (our son and partner) for a week then our daughter and family the week following, those visits offset to reduce the size of the gathering. I have no time for writing, no time for reading. Even today I have to dig into boxes of books to count them and prepare an offer for a man who may want to buy them all—all of my mom’s books, that is. Then it’s to the grocery store for the first time in two weeks. Then it’s cook a big pot of soup to hopefully last us a week. And, an important stock trade to watch today in what looks to be a huge up-market. Too much to do to even think about writing. Annual foot doc visit tomorrow.

I don’t know when things will calm down. I’ll try a simple post next Monday. At least I’m getting a few book sales of late, though my Amazon ads are not profitable any more.

books, family, home improvements, miscellaneous

A Busy Time Ahead

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On Friday this will all expand. Additional tables will be set up and moved out into the driveway and yard. I hope much of it goes.

For the next two weeks (at least), my life is going to be too full to keep up a regular blog schedule. I normally post on Monday and Friday. For a little while, however, I will likely do just once a week, probably on Monday.

What’s going on, you wonder? Since July my wife and I have been in the process of downsizing our possessions (not yet our house). We came to the realization that we have too much stuff, accumulated over 46 years of marriage and retrieved from the houses of three parents upon their deaths—or their own downsizing. We had to get rid of it.

This is a cute horse. Pinch its ear and it whinnies and moves it’s head and tail. But they grandkids don’t use it when they come. It fetched $25 on FB Marketplace, and some young child probably loves it now.

I started with my mother-in-law’s papers in July. Some I was able to discard, such as old health records and old financial records after shredding, but much my wife has to see before we can do that. She’s been in the process of that since my sorting gave her enough to look at. Things are being put into recycling. Cards and letters will all have to go, a very few saved for sentimental value.

Of course, I interrupted that work to transcribe the letter from our Kuwait years. They are now in the cloud and backed up. Someday, when life calms down, I’ll put them in book form for children and grandchildren. They aren’t great literature. No, simply a record of our time there. Someday I’ll do the same with the Saudi years.

Tools from Dad’s house. I’ve been surprised at how well tools are selling. Sure takes a lot of messaging, however, to get the sale made.

Slowly, slowly, we have been getting Esther’s things out of her room or our large basement storage room and making them ready for sale. Shelf decorations, boxed crystal, books, and clothes are all being gone through. It’s a slow process. I can only do so much and Lynda’s health and strength doesn’t allow her to work longer. She’s actually doing very well with it. I’d make the decisions on many things, but I know she has to be the one to do it.

Getting rid of Esther’s stuff, stuff that we don’t want or need and our children don’t want or need led me to look at our own stuff. While waiting on my wife’s strength to come back, I realized I had lots of stuff to get rid of that had come to us from Dad’s house back in 1997-98, stuff I never used. I wrote about this process before. All I’ll say now is last Saturday I found another tray of tools that can be sold.

But, it seems, no one wants this old, French postcard. Alas. Not sure where or how we will get rid of the postcards. We took hundreds of them from the house we owned in NC that had been left by the previous owner.

For all of this we are using Facebook Marketplace as our primary sales venue. For now, the only sales venue. I like the success we are having, but it is a slow process. Gent a new item listed and approved and almost immediately you will get “Is this item still available?” You tell them yes in a return message, and…never hear from them again. For one set of tools this resulted in five different people showing interest, even to the point of making appointments to come see and probably buy them. To the garage I went at the appointed time and…nothing. They didn’t show. Didn’t message that they wouldn’t show. Next day I get a message saying oh sorry but I just couldn’t come. Meanwhile I’ve told two other people that the tools are spoken for. Trying to be fair with buyers is turning into a lengthy and frustrating process.

This is a hard one. This tea and coffee brewer was a wedding gift for Lynda’s grandmother back in 1924. Hard to part with it, but we have decorations in abundance. Alas, so far almost no views of it on FB Marketplace.

Slow, frustrating, even maddening. But things are selling. First was a rocking horse that the grandkids have all outgrown. Then it was a 3-gallon aquarium I found on a shelf in the basement that neither of us knew when we got it or if we even used it. Then came the tools. Then came an old kerosene heater we haven’t used since about 1995. Clothes are listed but no one is looking at clothes ads. We have a few decorations listed but it’s too early to know if we will get any interest in them. I found a bunch of unused postcards that apparently belonged to my dad and listed those in several lots, but that doesn’t seem to be the type of things people are going to FB Marketplace to buy.

Meanwhile, we are setting up for a garage sale that will be this Friday and Saturday. I hate garage sales and said I would never do another. But here we are. The neighbors were doing one so we said we would do one too to try to generate more interest. At our last sale I think we did a little less than $200 worth. I’m hoping for a lot more this time around, but am prepared to be disappointed. The work involved is way too much for the reward.

But, the true downsizing/de-cluttering test comes when the sale is over and you have lots of leftover stuff to deal with. A friend has said, “Don’t bring it back in the house. Take it straight to Goodwill.” I’m prepared to do that but I’m not sure the wife is. That didn’t happen after our sale and we ended up with tables in the garage for years. I’m hoping and praying that doesn’t happen this time. If an item is marked as “we don’t need this anymore”, that should apply whether you could get money for it or not. Right?

A few of the bigger, more valuable items, the kind of things that potential buyers for are unlikely to be yard sale shoppers, sure, those can be kept for selling. But most things I think not.