Location, Location

Our house was located on a corner lot but backed to a town home community common ground.  This was quite lucky, since we knew that no one would build there and that we would maintain our privacy.  Our lot looked like a large wedge of pie; the crust was the street and the sides were my neighbors on one side and the common ground on the other side.  It had a very large front yard and smaller backyard but it was just right for us.

The location was perfect for many things one of which was having yard sales.  I would just put a sign out on the corner and get a ton of people. I had a yard sale after we had pared down our belongings. My boys thought a sale was great.  Both of them get very attached to their possessions but as long as I said they could keep the money from the sale, they were a little more cooperative about getting rid of things.

When I was little, my mom would tell us that we had to clean out our things and get them ready for the poor people.  In my mind, I could picture poor, unfortunate children with no toys or clothing.  I was prepared to give them everything I owned.  Every time I said that to my boys when they were growing up they would say, “I hate the poor people.  I’m not giving them anything.”  I don’t know how it happened that they came to be so selfish.  They had so much in comparison to me or my siblings but they didn’t want to give anything up.

Michael is still so damaged from my donating some of his favorite picture books to his second grade teacher that he still hasn’t forgiven me.  He is always making reference to some book I gave away.  I’ve had to go on Ebay several times to resurrect some obscure title from his preschool years that I “ripped out of his hands” to give to the poor people.

I used to have people just stop at my house and ask me if they could provide some service.  The very first time it happened it was a driveway company. A young guy in his early twenties knocked on my door and wanted to know if I was interested in having our driveway replaced.  It was a mess and I was interested but had little cash reserve.  I asked if he would allow me to pay him in two installments.  He said yes and off he went having only charged me $600.  He arrived the next morning and installed a beautiful thick driveway.  I was beside myself.  I paid him $300 that day and the balance the next month.  What terrific luck!  Had we called a paving company, it would have been at least $1200.

We also had people stop by asking for yard work which we usually declined.  However, two times when limbs had fallen from large trees, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to take advantage of our lucky location.

We lived in that small house for ten years.  During that time, we replaced the windows, the stove, dishwasher, washer, furnace and air conditioning.  We had transformed the outside with landscaping, new shutters, new fence and I had painted the house myself.  Even though I was looking forward to moving, we had many fond memories from the place.  In the end, it would be difficult to move…