Working Weekend

Hey, blogadoodles!! Long time no blog, right? We were pretty busy—and HOT—this holiday weekend. Temperatures hovered around 90F degrees every day.

It’s not even noon yet! Did I mention I hate humidity? HATE IT. And our central air is not working right; it’s not cooling down the house, so we haven’t even put it on—no sense in wasting the energy on an inefficient machine. We theorize that it either a) needs Freon (probably wasn’t filled adequately from the beginning) and/or b) has a leak. We try to put it on at 74F degrees, which is optimal, but it hasn’t been having much of an effect. So, hopefully our landlady will have it serviced, but we were having the same problem to a lesser degree (no pun intended) last summer and she said it was the thermostat. This year that excuse is not flying. This house is only 4 years old, so it shouldn’t have this sort of problem. But, in the mean time we’re doing our best to stay cool. I’m going to do a post on staying cool without an AC in a little while. Hopefully it will give you some ideas if you’re in the same steamy boat as me.

The good news about the weather: It didn’t interfere with our yard sale! It did rain early in the day on Monday morning, but we swept the water out of the driveway as much as we could and the show went on; sunny skies the rest of the day. And humidity.

Our yard sale was VERY successful! We only had time to hold it on Sunday and Monday, we were much too busy on Saturday getting ready for it. We sold a lot of things and received many compliments about how nice our stuff was. We had a few people come back two days in a row! Told you, we weren’t trying to pawn off totally useless stuff on people. Knickknack-free! The first guy that came spent $253!! He said that he’s been to a lot of garage sales and ours is the nicest he’s ever seen, lol. He said that others have total crap! I believe it. He called his son and his wife on his cell phone raving about it and even went to the ATM to get more money. We even had someone ask how much for our car! lol They were just consuming like crazy. We had many hagglers, which are annoying, but for things we’d like donate to charity anyway, we were willing to bend a little. We let a few things go pretty cheaply, but we’re moving soon, so things sitting in our garage depreciating and decaying isn’t ideal. That’s the thing about used stuff, very little actually appreciates, and most possessions lose half of their value a second after you walk out of the store.

One guy that came spoke very little English, and he was on foot (he lives just a mile into town and works at our go-to pizza place), so he wanted to pay for things and have us save them for when he comes back with a car. We felt bad, mostly because our Spanish is embarrassingly poor and it was hard to communicate with him, so Dustin offered to give him a ride home. He ended up buying a lot more then, lol. He appreciated the ride home and he was one of the people that came back the next day with his son and a car, haha. They bought even more stuff. Gotta love returning customers! Of course, Dustin wants to start a retail business ASAP, LOL. We already had plans for offline businesses, but I think Dustin wants to start a second-hand store now. He gets attached to ideas rather quickly, lol. If we ran a lemonade stand, he’d want to buy a lemon grove. I’m the same way, so I shouldn’t act like he’s completely crazy. Entrepreneurial spirits are hard to tame.

Overall, we were pleased with our results and plan to have a yard sale every weekend this summer, or until we run out of stuff or have other plans, lol. Lots of fun, plus it was nice to be outside where it was actually cooler than inside. We set up our laptops in the garage, so it wasn’t bad at all. The time went by quickly; we had a near constant stream of customers and met a lot of neighbors we’ve never met before. Our subdivision is huge!! Can’t wait to host another one. We need to find some more stuff to sell.

Turtles Are Mean!

Dustin went to town to pick up sandwiches for our lunch on Sunday. On his way home he stopped to help a turtle cross the road. Dustin, not suspecting that turtles can be vicious, tried to pick it up by its shell to carry it to the other side of the road but it immediately hissed at him and tried to bite his finger!! Good thing it didn’t, he probably would have lost it! I didn’t know turtles can be vicious like that. We looked it up when he got home and sure enough, snapping turtles are meanies. Poor Dustin. He tried to do a good thing and now he’s traumatized, lol. My mom said that she stops and helps them cross too, but she’s never had that happen. Just lucky, I guess. Lesson learned: Don’t interfere with nature.

I did zero cooking this weekend. We ate out a bunch of times and I made smoothies the rest of the time. And ate loads of ice pops, of course. With all the activity this weekend, I actually lost a couple pounds. Not surprised, hours of moving around, lifting heavy things combined with hot weather and eating very little, weight loss is inevitable.

My favorite smoothie of the past few days? This one:

Blueberry Banana with Coconut Oil

The white specks are coconut oil—it hardens when it’s cold.

Ingredients for 2 servings:

• 1.2 cups frozen organic blueberries
• 1 medium banana
• 1.2 cups ice cubes
• .5 to 1 cup cold water as needed
• 1 TBSP extra virgin coconut oil
• 1/4 cup sugar or agave nectar

Method:

Blend all ingredients in high-speed blender to desire consistency and smoothness. –/+ water and ice to taste.

Makes 2 smoothies | ~242 calories each

So delicious! Dustin isn’t crazy about coconut-flavored anything, but he couldn’t even detect it in this. I could, but he didn’t know what it was. He just knew that it was YUMMY! Maybe Mr. I-don’t-like-coconut actually DOES like coconut? Hmm.

I had a terrible night’s sleep last night. First, I was itchy ALL day. My arms were terribly itchy, I couldn’t stop scratching! Dry skin from the heat and taking too many cold showers with too much soap/shampoo? I don’t know, but it’s annoying. Then, my feet and calves started to itch when I was under the covers. So, I could not fall asleep between the itching and the heat. I finally broke down and applied some Benadryl anti-itch gel, which didn’t help at all. Then, I tried some Aveeno lotion with oatmeal. That helped. The itching went away, but then my stomach started to hurt. I ended up sleeping only 4 hours because I woke up early this morning and I wasn’t tired at all. Hopefully I’ll sleep well tonight. I think the coconut oil may have upset my tummy. It has that tendency, hence why I don’t have it too much. Perhaps if I have it more often I will build up a tolerance. Big maybe. heh

Time to go tackle the rest of this busy week. Dustin’s birthday is on Saturday! And that means lots of party preparation. Yay!

Did you have a nice weekend? Did you do anything special?

I know I’m a day late, but it’s never a bad time to remember those who have served our country and paid the ultimate price. I am so very grateful to all the active duty servicemen and servicewomen and to all of our nation’s veterans. Without you guys, we wouldn’t have a country. My humble thanks, today and always.

“I should have loved freedom, I believe, at all times, but in the time in which we live I am ready to worship it.” –  Alexis de Tocqueville

Support and Thoughts for Others

With so many tragedies occurring everywhere in the world, from Japan to Israel to Missouri, we, the fortunate ones, must take time to appreciate what we have and help those in need if we can. If you are looking for causes to donate to, please consider these two:

• Wounded Warrior Project
• American Red Cross

Dustin and I plan to use part of our yard sale proceeds for donations, on top of what we already give. Every little bit helps = so true.

Tagged as: American Red Cross, charity, donations, drinks, fruit, holidays, humidity, Memorial Day weekend, smoothies, vegan, vegetarian, weather, Wounded Warrior Project, yard sales