Foreclosure Sale and Josh in Europe...

Yesterday was one of those days...

Started out great - I was able to stay focused long enough to get alot done at my office, you know, catching up on little loose ends in between a steady stream of customers. I was very efficient and felt very proud of myself. Even handled one stinker of a customer. Those are always fun - NOT. Yesterday, I locked myself out of my office not once, but TWICE. Had to call our other office and finally my friend and boss, Charlie, to come and unlock it for me. My purse, my phones, my keys were all locked in my office. I was going to make a trip to the potty before I left and as soon as I pulled the office door closed behind me and heard that "click", I knew! I went across the street and called for help, waited, waited, waited. My husband was trying to call me and showed up at my office about 6:00 p.m. looking for me. He was ready to beat the door down and see if I'd been mugged, or had a heart attack, or fallen. No, just stupid little me! Then I ran by the grocery store and forgot to get his Skoal (which he had requested that I get). I was such a doofus yesterday.

I'm very easy going and I can get along with anyone, and am able to calm a customer's fluster and make a friend. I've only had ONE instance where I had to get in somebody's face. I've worked here at the construction office/self-storage facility for the last seven years. Every so often, we have a foreclosure sale & auction off the storage units that the tenants quit paying for and run up a huge account. I generally have the sales on a Friday morning at 8:00 or so. Now, there are seasoned junkers/flea marketers/and the curious that come to the sales. Some of them are quite experienced. (As you know, these folks are a different breed of cat - myself included.) I send out flyers to my "list" of marketers and also the sale has to be put in the newspaper with the location, time & date. (In case you wonder, YES we DO have a dumpster at the storage and YES I DO take advantage of "dumpster diving" from time to time - you'd be surprised what people throw away... that's another story for another day!)

Friday morning awhile back comes and my office fills up with folks anxious to get on with the program (the sale) - you never know who will show up or how many. I have them all sign in. There is a guy that calls and asks for directions and says he's on his way. I tell him I would wait for a few minutes, but then we would have to start without him.

There's this older couple in the hallway (who've been to my sales before), the wife is mouthin' aloud that we should go ahead and get started. They've been grumbling and making comments like, "well, so-n-so storage always starts earlier...we could've already been done and gone...this girl don't know what she's doing...the fewer we have at this sale the better our chances will be of getting stuff cheap... we shouldn't have to wait for anybody... blah blah blah".

I listen to it for a good 30 minutes from the time they get there, even interjecting once that I am waiting on one person, and it's not even quite 8:00 yet. I'm trying to be nice but I've about had it up to my eyeballs with her palaverin'. They are upsetting the rest of the people, I'm afraid they're going to incite a rebellion and I'm beginning to hear a few comments from some of the others.

Grumble, grumble, grumble. Great Granny Grunt! Ok, that's it! I go out of my office to the waiting area and come face to face with the lady. She sees me approach and shuts up. In my nicest quietest angry voice I say thru clenched teeth, "Ma'am, I don't give a rat what the other storage facilities do, this is MY storage facility, and if you don't like the way I'm doing things, then I invite you to git outta here! I can refuse to let you in the sale if I want to! Shut your mouth, please, or you can leave!" High fives all around, sighs of relief, and some stifled laughter. I think I hear, "You go, girl!"

NEW TOPIC: I always have to do that for my husband - I tend to ramble and jump about on different subject matter... You may or may not remember, but my middle son, Josh, is in Europe taking some classes this summer at King's College in London. He is also doing some traveling on the weekends while over there. I thought I'd post a few pics from him in Ireland at the Cliffs of Mohor and the Clanmacnoise Monastic settlement. He loved the Cliffs- said it was the most beautiful place he'd ever been. Said it was 685' from the cliffs to the ocean. It was on a Sunday morning. He'd downloaded "I Can Only Imagine" on his IPod, so he listened to that song over and over while looking upon the cliffs and the ocean. "Mom, it gave me chills," he told me. He's loving his trip! He's broadening his horizons and expanding his world view (as my hubby puts it). I'm missin' him.

This week he's in France at Normandy, Omaha beach, and Paris. He called this a.m. to tell me he and his buddies visited Notre Dame and now are at the Eiffel Tower and tomorrow they're going to the Louvre. He says the countryside of France is beautiful & I'm hoping that he takes lots of cottage-y flower-y countryside & cute-little-shoppe photos that give me inspiration to paint! They will go to Germany and possibly Switzerland this weekend/next week. I'm so glad he's got this opportunity...

Josh says that he's seeing things and places that are

hundreds of years old. The USA is a relatively young country if you think about it. I mean, people have been here for awhile, but as a nation, we're still pretty young.

At the British Archives in London where he's doing some research for a paper he has to write, he said he has seen documents that Britain has been keeping for hundreds of years, some possibly over a thousand, since they started the Archives. - the Magna Carta sent by the US, the Doomsday Document, letters from Hitler, Churchill, all the "big meats", etc. Just fascinating...

Well, I'll close for now. Thanks for humoring me by reading this, if you made it this far... my brain is mush. Now I gotta run by the store and pick out something half-way healthy to fix for supper. See you soon!