Tuesday, April 9, 2013

Surviving the wind (shit) storm

I’m still trying to get caught up in all aspects of my life from the past week. Unfortunately this blog takes a bit of a back seat in comparison to the reality of real life human interaction. Just the way it is. When one suffers complete mental exhaustion and is seriously just trying to get caught up it hardly seems like a priority to come post here. But alas, it was only two days off and here I am.

As I could have easily predicted, the end of the week last week got COMPLETELY insane. Last Thursday night was a massively busy day which led to practically breaking down last Friday. Yeah, I had a mini melt down on my mom and then husband. It’s funny what a whole week of complete chaos will do to the soul. Well that mixed with a complete lack of exercise and any normalcy. Friday was not a good day, hence no post.

Friday night things were better but I was waiting for what I knew would be the most insane day on Saturday. Insane is not far off from the truth. I always worry that no one will show up. I’ve done this a few times and it is never even close to an issue, but I still worry. I do all this work and I want it to be worthwhile so I understandably get nervous. I should never doubt people’s desire for a cheap deal. Unfortunately the weather called for wind and rain. It did not disappoint on that front. We set up easy ups in a “tent city” on my driveway. We had 4 easy ups tarped off on one side and strapped together.

Saturday morning my cousin and her husband brought 2 more easy ups we added to the mix. I mention them because the wind was wicked and around 11 or so on Saturday we got this crazy wind gust that picked up two of the easy ups and FLEW them across the driveway and fortunately wrapped around a telephone pole instead of someone’s care or a house. The easy ups were weighted down by cinder blocks. HEAVY stone and they went flying in the air. We are so ridiculously lucky that no one got hurt. My aunt and her 2 year old foster child were sitting in a chair and the cinder block and easy up literally flew over her head. They were destroyed so we had to give my cousin the money for new ones. A total freak accident but I felt blessed no one was drastically hurt or property destroyed. I have never seen anything quite like it honestly.

Back to the sale. I put it on craigslist and we had signs in the neighborhood all indicating 9 AM start time period. NO early sales. I am big at that and we rope off the area so no one can mosey in… for some reason a rope really works and people respect it. About 8:30 we had people starting to line up behind the rope. I was getting scared because it looked like a mob of people. At 8:50 or so we probably had 100 people lined up. No joke. It was a sea of crazy. I was scared and I was afraid my neighbors would completely hate me. We eventually dropped the rope and the swarm began. We easily were insanely busy for hours and hours. I checked people out for 4 hours solid. We had a line and I enacted the whole, “I can help whoever’s next” line as we had multiple checkouts going.

Insanely busy is the best way to describe it. We had lots of great help though so that is a plus. I have an amazing extended family as we ended up having 12 of us there the entire day and they were awesome. We needed them and I am so grateful to all of them. My family rocks! Cousins, aunts, family. Amazing!

I did VERY well as I had hoped I would. We still have a garage set up with some product and will do a sale this Saturday but it won’t be anything like last Saturday. There just isn’t enough stuff left, but enough to be worth our time and effort to basically open the garage at 8 and have a sale at 9. Sit out there a few hours to make some more money and unload some more stuff. After Saturday we WILL clean up and I can officially have my garage back.

Saturday night, I was completely exhausted. I did not make the best food choices. I’m not going to lie, after eating pizza for lunch we went out to Mexican food for dinner where I got a much deserved margarita and we got fajitas. I ate too many chips and dip and bad stuff, but I really didn’t care. I wish on Sunday I could have pulled myself back together but I didn’t. I was still suffering from week long fatigue and did not get enough sleep so my Sunday ended up being shit as well. I did not eat good at all and could find zero strength to exercise. I took off far too many days but the money from the garage sale was more than worth it.

Yesterday I managed to get my ass back in gear finally. I ate well and ran for the first time in like 5 days. It was so amazing and easy and fun. At least I always get my ass back in gear. Nice run and I can live with the lack of exercise as I was pretty much running around like a chicken with my head cut off for a week solid. Today and tomorrow will consist of eating healthy and running and then Thursday will be a weigh-in that honestly I am not expecting shit from since my food wasn’t even good this week but Thursday will start a new week and that will be good.

I haven’t thrown everything out the window; I haven’t thrown in the towel. I didn’t let one or two crazy weeks derail me from my goals. This shows me that I can live my life and still manage to get myself back on track. This is maintaining and I’ll take it. I was far too busy to really care too much about my food choices. But in the back of my brain I knew I cared so perhaps that stopped me from completely binging and of course I also always knew that I was going to get right back at it the moment my world allowed for it. So yes, I am committed to getting completely back on track.

This is after all the rest of my life. This is something I am committed to for forever so a week here and there is totally normal. I am so glad that Saturday is over though. I am glad I get to come home this week and just run and exist. This Saturday doesn’t bother me too much as I don’t have to do anymore prep work for it. The hard work is all done. Yeah!

My neighbor now thinks we are besties. She came over and totally brought tons of people and bought lots of stuff but she kept coming back. On Saturday she was calling me by my name, Emily this and Emily that and honestly I still don’t know her name. The one who lives across the street and noticed I lost weight. Still bizarre to me. Anyhow, maybe she’s stalking me because I honestly don’t ever remember telling her my name, but she knows it. Oh well.

Someone did knock on my door last night at like 9 PM. I didn’t know them and I was honestly in my pajamas so I didn’t answer the door. They went away. This is the hazard of having a garage sale like that. The crazies think its okay to show up and knock on your door AFTER the sale. I don’t answer. No, I won’t let you in to buy 10 worth of stuff. This is my life and you cannot show up at all hours and expect me to let you in. People are insane.

I just have to keep thinking that this garage sale pays for my Maui vacation and then some so all the crap is ultimately worth it. In less than 2 months I get to sit on a beach and relax and refresh and go to my happy place, literally. All is good. Now I just have to try and focus my attention back onto my health a little. This week I can give my health about a 50-75% attention as I still have more garage sale stuff going on. But after this Saturday its 100% back to doing what I do best… Focusing on me!!! I’m such a selfish bitch. Mwwwhaaaa…..

Back to work now…

1 comment:

Unknown said...

It does sound like a lot of work (especially the part about dealing with crazies) but if it pays for Hawaii, then I am sure it is worth it. That's really funny that your neighbour thinks you guys are friends now. If she was at your place all weekend, she probably heard someone say your name.