Today, there is a garage sale going on for everything my son and his family are not taking with them and for everything I don't have room for. Everything I am moving with me must fit in the long bed red truck that my son is using to move me to Portland, Oregon. My ex-husband is scheduled to be here on the 15th of this month and all of us want to be out of here by then. My son is selling everything I bought for the house. I did not realize how much I did buy until he started to label things with the stickers he bought from the dollar store. He is even selling the stove, washer and dryer, dish washer, two fridges, furniture, rugs, air conditioners including the swamp cooler, tools, lawn mower and other yard maintenance tools.
My son's partner got into the U.S.Army and will be leaving in October so they are selling their stuff too. She will be going through basic and AIT training for being a medic and then leaving for her duty station after that. My son and her son will follow if she is stationed anywhere but Afghanistan or Iraq. There is a good chance my son and his family are leaving Redding as well.
I am staying in my room as I have no idea what to do with the garage sale and he said he and his family have got it covered. His other sons are coming over after their soft ball game. I lost so much when his father and brother came here when I was in Korea and I had to pay money to get the trash towed away as it was just dumped and after the rain fell it was just useless junk by then. This time, I am getting some money for it. It is being done on my terms in that I have given my youngest son permission to do this. If we left all of this behind, it would be trashed anyhow.
Still, it seems so sad to see a garage sale of one's things. When I went to other people's garage sales, I never gave it a thought that there might be some drama tied into the decision to have one as there is with this one. Everyday, something happens in which I learn something new about a situation I had not thought about before. Sometimes, it is re-thinking an old situation. I used to self-hate my body and my overweight and then I realized that it was a good thing in my life and may have save myself from making some horrendous mistakes. I also learned that it was because I had other interests such as reading that childhood friends could not follow or understand. I had thought there was something awful in my personality.
I am not writing all of this because I am such a good person or different. We all have this. What we view as bad chapters in our lives are not bad at all and could be instrumental in forming the good things about our character.
I know someone who has one leg that is shorter than the other through some birth related injury. She felt bad about it all through childhood and became fascinated by the reasons it had happened to her. Because of this interest, she read all there was on birth injuries and discovered that it was all due to the incompetence of her mother's doctor that she had her injuries. Her mother felt guilty for it as she thought it was her fault. It wasn't. She ended up being pretty angry at her mother at first and then later at the doctor who died while she was in high school. The doctor was an alcoholic and had no business practicing medicine. It was later in her life when she was angry at a husband and filed for divorce because he was drinking too much. Everyone in her family faulted her for divorcing him as he made good money and was very charming. When he died in an alcohol related accident, she was so glad that her shortened leg had made her so aware of the damage alcohol did to children and had refused to let him drive the kids anywhere and had cost her money in legal fees. She had her children alive and well.
One of my neighbors just came over to inquire as to what was happening with the house because of the garage sale. He was one of the people I have known over the years. His wife works for the state and will be retiring in a few years and he is worried about their medical bills after she does. People are scared about the future of medicare. Luckily, I don't depend on it, but many people I know do.
He also does not want to move from his house and looks at my moving as a daunting task. I agree with him but do not feel I have much choice. At the same time, it feels like an adventure. As I said along the way on this blog, I thought my adventures were over. They are far from over and there will be more garage sales along the way.
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