Spring semester: day seventy four
Yard sale: day one
Well folks, here we go.
The weight bench and weights were picked up yesterday afternoon by a sweet girl about my age who had been married for four months and had just moved here from Alaska. It took the better part of an hour to load them up into her big SUV, but we did it just fine. It was like playing Tetris with weights. She also took one of my smaller bookcases and the my old big beanbag chair for her two daughters, as well -- which were two of the other things I'd listed for free on my ad. All's well that ends well, I suppose. I didn't get anything out of any of it, of course; those were all things I'd listed for free to get people to just take them away. The fact that she drove up here from South Wichita (so, about 40 miles) was enough.
She was funny, though; in Alaska she didn't have to worry about spiders, and here they're everywhere. I killed two brown recluse while moving/loading the weights, and did so nonchalantly -- and she was totally squicked out by them.
"See, you like spiders, don't you? You know all about them and aren't afraid of them."
"No, I hate them," I replied, "but living in Kansas, I've gotten used to them because they're everywhere and you can't avoid them no matter what you do. You can put up those sticky glue traps everywhere, and that'll catch and kill a lot of them, but living here you'll never eradicate them fully."
People who don't live out here (or have never lived here before) don't understand that the brown recluse issue is waaaaaay overblown. I've lived in this house for five years, and in that time I've never been bitten by one to my knowledge. Even if I have, I've never noticed. Only something like 4% of people have any sort of adverse reaction to a recluse bite anyway. And in Missouri and Kansas, they are quite literally everywhere. Further south in the state, and in Oklahoma and Texas, there are Black and Brown Widows to worry about, as well -- I've never seen one anywhere here, though. The two recluse I killed today were two of three that I've killed this spring thus far -- all of them in the garage or storage area and hibernating in/under things. One was in the weights, one was in the table/chairs set I got rid of earlier this week, and one was in the bookcase this lady took. With these cold snaps and late freezes/snows we've had this spring, there are nowhere near as many as I'd normally see, which is good -- less of a nuisance, right? There don't tend to be a bunch of them if it's been a bad winter, and our winter sucked. Last spring, I'd probably killed twenty of them by this point, most of them in the house or in the traps. Aside from those three, I've not seen any anywhere.
Anyway. We loaded everything up, thanked each other, and she left. I went back inside, checked my email and messaged my students, and went to bed -- without moving anything downstairs (as I was, and am, exhausted). I got back up around 11 or so.
My 102 students' final exam went fine -- all of them were done at the 70-minute mark (a total, absolute first over all of the semesters/years I've been teaching), which could either be a really good thing or a really bad thing. I'm not sure, honestly. One of them gave me "moving blankets" when she left -- which are, ironically, U-Haul's blankets that I could've rented from U-Haul when I reserved the truck.
"My logic is that they already charged us for keeping them when we moved," she said, referring to herself and her husband, who recently moved up here from Oklahoma, "and we were just going to throw them away. I figured you could use them."
I can and will. I thanked her for them, of course; I thought that was really nice of her.
That class is over now, and I won't have to return to the West campus...well...ever. The thought of that was somewhat bittersweet. I really like teaching out there, and I really like the staff out there. They're all awesome people and have always been incredibly grateful that I was willing to drive out there to teach -- even though it's about the same distance away (it's a few miles further, but eh) from me as the main campus is. The administrator lady (who bought a crock pot from me for $5 yesterday morning) gave me three or four new boxes, too, which I added to the rest of my collection in the basement laundry room. I can't really box much else up until I see what I can get rid of at the yard sale today and tomorrow, and further assess my situation.
I also won't be able to grade through those students' final exams until later in the weekend after the yard sale is over. The thought occurred to me that I could probably grade them this morning during the yard sale, but I'd rather focus on actually dealing with "customers," so to speak. You know, whatever ones I get, anyway. I expect to have people pulling up early for the bigger/more in-demand items such as the lawn mower, vacuum, or rocking chair. After that, it may be a quiet day, however. I don't know exactly what to expect overall, to be honest with you.
I'll also say that it's very hard to fight my impulses to go "shopping" myself around town during the city-wide sale. I really don't need anything else, nor do I want anything else or have anywhere for it. That's one of the reasons I'm locking myself to my front yard for these next two days, actually -- yes, it is to get rid of a lot of what I have, but it's also so that I'm not tempted to go out and get more shit.
I continually find more things to put a sticker on and take outside. I've not moved anything downstairs yet. I'm really just trying to wake up still. And I haven't eaten anything.
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