The spider curse is back on. With the exception of those few that we saw, I’ve managed to back them off again, and even with the fact that the rain has long since washed the poison off the doors.

The good news is that we’re having more success with our auctions. Currently, we have 10 auctions with bids and 7 without, mostly because they still have a lot of time left. Due to the questions we’ve been getting about the guitar I got almost exactly 14 years ago, we still think it’ll sell even though no one’s bid on it yet. We’re thinking we’re doing better because of the store. Meaning, they may not be buying from the store like crazy, but having the store and more feedback gives them better peace of mind as far as buying from us goes. However, the more we learn about eBay, the less we understand. They seem to be buying the weirdest shit. They’re especially going after old stuff. Surprisingly, a lot of it is worthless. He got $11 yesterday for a couple of old AOL disks that have no value whatsoever.

I have my doubts that it’ll work, but to try to entice people to take some of the unwanted incense off our hands, we cut it to just $1.99 with free shipping on the 50-pack variety pack. That’ll cover shipping so we’re giving it away and not paying to give it away. God knows we’ve paid enough to give and do for others! Given the fact that we’ve got a dozen or so scents in here I don’t want anyway, I’m ok with giving it away. I’d rather that than throw it away, but if it doesn’t go by the time we leave, I will dump it. Better yet, I’ll just leave it here.

Anyway, sometime this morning someone finally bid on the Barbies, but like I said, I knew they’d go. Someone’s also bid on the first of the 6 rodent tube/accessory lot which we weren’t sure would or wouldn’t go. There are 4 bids on the Bowflex we were getting worried about. Someone emailed Tom asking if he’d be willing to ship it and he told them okay, as long as they’re willing to pay the $175 it’ll cost us to ship it. It will have to be broken down into 3 or 4 boxes. Still, I hope the winning bidder is local! We’ll find out this evening. It’s up to $305. We need every penny we can get to live on while we’re still here and for the move. I warned Mary my letters may slow down. Seeing that we paid $1200 for the Bowflex, I’d really like it if it could sell for around $600 - $800, but because this one doesn’t have the pull-down bar, it probably won’t get much over $400. Better than nothing, though.

No one seems to want porcelain dolls, so assuming the 14” Jessica doll doesn’t sell, I may relist her at just a buck or throw her in the store for $5.

Because Mary and Dave are lazy, as Tom said, and hate to deal with hassles (meaning, they’d never want to deal with doing eBay auctions), he’s going to see if he can get their old junk. They have a lot of old junk because just like with Tom, they never throw anything away. However, he’s not going to just come out and ask Miss Perfect if he can sell her old junk. Instead, he hopes that by mentioning how well old junk sells she’ll offer it to him. If she doesn’t, then maybe he’ll ask and even offer to share any profits. He regrets the stuff he dumped when cleaning out his parent’s old house. If we only knew then what we know now! At least then we could’ve gotten a little money for the time and money she and Jackie and Jim used him for.

Right now I just hope we can sell enough to keep him from having to work while we’re still here, and that we’re not here more than a couple of months if even that, and that we find a suitable place in Oregon and aren’t put out too much for too long in the beginning. The thought of having to go back to trailers, hotels and Laundromats for too long does not appeal to me. It’s fun and adventurous, yet it’s a bitch. One we shouldn’t have to resort to at our age. I swear, every time we get ahead in life, we get kicked back! Well, hopefully it’ll be a little harder for people to kick us without the hefty mortgage payment hanging over our heads to have to deal with in the midst of it all.

We love Little Guy who continues to be loads of fun, though with a couple of flaws. He’s turned into a little pisser like Little Fella was and isn’t very big. He’s small like Harry was which means he can’t go in the cage I like best.

If Bob’s alive and I don’t hear from him before we move, then we’ll end up losing touch because no mail can be forwarded when we leave and I don’t even know if our phones will work. We may be totally impossible to reach for a while and I don’t want to write to him if he may not be alive.

I know Paula’s alive and free. I called her. Not to talk, but to see if she was out and about in the free world. Sure enough, she’s just fine. I hung up as soon as she answered, though she’ll know I called. She’ll probably just assume it was a bad connection, but I don’t care. I know now I no longer wish to be friends with someone that selfish, ungrateful and unstable, and now I hope I don’t get a letter from her before we move, though people have a habit of trying to reach me right before I move. That’s what happened with Minnie and Doe and Art, but who says I have to acknowledge them? No one makes me do anything I don’t want to do and they never will again. That was one thing I promised myself nearly a year ago today when Scot called.

I’m still 130 and I intend to stay that way. I figured, ok, if I can’t lose weight, I can at least keep from gaining, so I’m watching what I eat with just one day a week off for a snack.

Later…

We got an email from someone in Sweden asking if we would ship the Barbies there. Tom checked and found that we could do it for as little as $35, but even that’s expensive. We told them we’d be willing to, but why would someone want Barbies from here? Especially when Barbie’s everywhere. Why not just bid on an auction in Sweden?

Later…

We had another sale from the store. An old computer game for $2. Meanwhile, 12 out of our 18 auctions have bids, and we have over 1000 views on all our items.