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orange blossom
Cleaning out the basement a little every day. Hurt my shoulder and had to take a few days off. Got an ice storm and couldn't safely haul things out to the garage. The garage is a holding pen for the yard sale and it's almost full. Again. And there's so much more left to get out of the house.
When I was cleaning the cat box a few weeks ago I bumped into a shelf and knocked a few bottles of my mom's wine off and they smashed on the ground and then all hell broke loose. I don't drink wine, but I was keeping them because I thought they would be nice gifts for people. Now I don't know why I thought that, because my youngest brother can't drink because of his medication, and my two other brothers are total drunks and I don't have any friends. So...these bottles smashed right behind me, scared the crap out of me, stunk like pure vinegar or cleaning products. Glass everywhere, wine running under shelves and the stairs toward the main drain, having to sweep the glass, disinfect the floor, dry the floor, go over it with a vacuum, keep the cat away from it, and finish cleaning her box.
That sound of the glass breaking just set everything off and it's been really horrible ever since.
The only good thing is my husband finally realized that he can not drink. So yay I get to be sober again, complete with physical withdrawals, anxiety, and stress. It's a good thing, but I feel like death. And I feel like this is a circle that is just going to keep going around and around and around forever.
I found my old Pez dispensers and thanks to the youtube channel Curiosity Inc. I learned that Pez without feet are worth more so I looked them up on eBay and long story short, we sold a set of two Pez for over $400 and another for $60 and we have about 12 more to sell and who the hell would pay that kind of money for an old plastic crap candy toy thing? I am more than willing to take advantage of them, but really, of all the things in this house, the old Pez dispensers are what we start a savings account with?
I found my old Strawberry Shortcake dolls and Herself the Elf dolls. I remember when I was here right after my parents died and my brother found the dolls and said he wanted to throw them out because their scratch n' sniff smells had gone bad and I said OK, go ahead, but he obviously never did, because they were stuffed on a shelf in the basement.
I was extremely anxious and "ruminating" as my therapist used to say, but not in a place well enough to do anything real, so my husband and I spent a good portion of last night getting their little outfits back on and looking them up online to make sure the right shoes and dresses got on the right dolls. For some reason most of them were naked.
And as I was dressing them I remembered that they were a real bitch to dress and I must have just given up. It's funny because I saw lots of them for sale on eBay that were all naked as well, with the clothes included but not on the dolls.
I am keeping one Strawberry Shortcake doll (one I had a duplicate of because I got one as a gift that I already had I remembered) and one Herself the Elf doll because she's missing her shoes and they are just kind of cute. The rest I am going to sell, because they aren't as valuable as Pez, but they are worth about $25 each since they have all their little shoes and pets and whatnot and I have about 10 of those so it's worth my time.
It was kind of fun to mess around with them, but as we were looking up the dolls, I started to remember what went with what doll or remembered games I played with them and it's exhausting.
That's my life now. Day in and day out I find things that have memories attached to them for me and although they aren't always bad, sometimes they are. And I honestly don't want to deal with it. I wish I could wake up every morning and have no recall of anything except who I am and how to live life on the most basic level.
Every day I am clearing out this house. Still. Months later. And it will probably be continuing like this for at least another year. It's horrible and I hate it. And it feels like a full time job. And I until recently I felt like I had no help.
So I am going to try to market off my childhood as much as I can. I haven't even started trying to sell any of my parents' collectables or such. It's a lot of hard work to sell online, but I am going to try to do all this so I can get land someday. Land I can have some peace on at least for a few years before I drop dead from all the other things this life has thrown at me.
The Herself the Elf doll I am keeping was named "Willow Song". I looked them up on wiki and it says...
"...has extra keen ears, so she can listen to what no one else hears. She's in charge of all of nature's sounds, from the chirping of birds to the barking of hounds. She's often thought of as a daydreaming dear. But she's not as clumsy as she may appear. Her frog-tipped wand keeps villains away, making the woods safe, by night and day."
8:33 PM - Monday, Dec. 28, 2020
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