A crazy weekend and some Monday grumbles.

This past weekend, hubby and I spent both days standing alongside his little sister and brother with little 77¢ Home Depot aprons strapped to our hips, selling the bulk of Grandma’s 85-year accumulation of chachkes. I can only say it was kind of depressing. Not just the unending heaps of what is ultimately a useless crap manufactured from precious resources for no other purpose than to take up space and gather dust… but also the people who came to buy it… It was a truly astounding buffet of humanity that passed through G’s door—from hippies to toothless stretch-pant wearing moms with hoards of unruly and dirty-socked kids in tow… it was… it was… it just was.


Someone please tell me why?



Gathers dust AND murders you violently while you sleep... what a deal!

People will haggle over 25¢… people will try to steal things… people will be generous and pay more than asked because they heard that Granny is still alive and needs whatever she can get… People can be jerks, they can smell, they are loud, they are sweet, they are honest to a fault, and they are greedy and unbearable. Ugh… people. Sometimes I just can’t handle people.

OMG… people were so difficult... they’d gather up a massive pile of stuff, and try to get most of it for nothing. We’d say no, and they were completely unwilling to put anything back or compromise. I don’t go to the checkout counter at the store with two carts full of stuff and tell the teller; “Oh, I’m sorry, I only have $15 to pay for all this stuff… And I need it all. So here’s $15; bye…” No. I don’t care if this is an estate sale… it’s the same thing. Man. Honestly, those people make me so mad, I’d rather throw everything into the dump than sell it to them for peanuts. Illogical? Yes. Justified? Totally.

Some of the worst people were the after-churchers. I know this is wrong to say, but the Christian folks were the most difficult to deal with. I’m serious. They came in after services on Sunday in decently dressed hoards, and tried to swindle every one of us for every last penny we were trying to make for Grandma J. They’d come in with hoards of kids that would scatter like cockroaches the moment they crossed the threshold, and the parents kept you so distracted with mickey-mouse haggling over dimes, that you only realized the kids made off with pilfered items after the whole group has exited in a single unit.

The easiest people to deal with, the ones who were most pleasant and most affable and honest were the Mexicans … They come in and barely speak English, and are always so delighted when I reply to them in Spanish. They ask prices, add things in, and every time I happened to miss an item when totaling, they’d point it out and dutifully pay it. Their kids were infinitely better behaved (often acting as interpreters, poor things). One of them did terrify the cockatiels, but wrapping the cage solved that problem. They also did not haggle at all, they accepted our quotes, and if it was too high, they’d put it back. The after-churchers a couple of times, I caught them unilaterally ‘throwing in’ last-second items and trying to tell me that something they wanted wasn’t worth anything. If you want it... it’s worth something… so shut up and give me the damned 50¢ and then go back to church to re-evaluate that whole ‘thou shalt not swindle old ladies and try to steal items because it’s a sin’ thing.

I’m disgruntled by Christians lately. Normally, I admire them. I admire most people of faith, whatever religion they choose. I am not a person of faith; I was baptized Catholic and did once attend services as a child, but I have since grown up resolved on figuring out things for myself and resigning my soul to whatever happens to it when I bite the big one. I’ll take responsibility for my life, and if I end up in Hell if there is one, then so be it. At least I’ll be with the fun people.

Christians once seemed to me like happier people to me… they have faith, and therefore answers, and they had less conflict in their lives… but that’s not entirely true, I've learned as I've gotten older… seeing how lots of them struggle with their conflicting views and faith… and these cracks of conflict show up a lot. I have some friends and acquaintances who are Christian and who are the best people in the world—but they seem fewer and far between. Lately, there seem to be more and more of the ones who hand you their Christian card as if it’s some sort of guarantee of honesty and goodness, when it all reality they are the worst, most intolerant, horrible creatures in the world. For instance… I know one ‘Christian’ lady, who bespeaks of how she adores Jesus and his teachings and proclaims her righteousness to all, blablabla, but she is an adulteress, covets married men, meddles in marital relationships, and who, for a lack of better words, is a big nasty manipulative, disingenuous .. well... she's kind of a slut. I know another ‘Christian’ who uses the N-word in every conversation I’ve ever had with him, says without compunction that Obama should be assassinated and believes this is entirely right. There are more cases in my circle of friends and acquaintances who fall into the ‘how-can-you-really-call-yourself-a-Christian?’ category… but I’m already disgusted talking about them right now.

Thems good, Godly people they are! Are these people totally blind to how hypocritical they are?  They claim to follow the teachings of someone who proposed tolerance and kindness, and yet somehow they act the opposite and feel justified somehow. Yeah. I’m mad at them these days. Selective charity… righteous indignation and blatantly ignorant choices… Yeah, I’ll get off at the ‘Hell’ stop if that’s the case. At least Satan’s forthright about what a colossal jerk he is; and with my upbringing with his succubus, my mother, I’m already well versed on what to expect if I end up down in the fiery chasms. At least I can honestly say I’m not a bad person. I know a lot of folks who think because they go to Church every Sunday, and say they love Jesus, that they get a permanent pass from their being massive ***holes their whole lives and being righteous about it. Where’s that self-reflection people? Seriously? You're making GOOD Christians look terrible and I *know* there are lots of them out there!

This weekend was an exercise in bad people, bad attitudes, bad taste and bad teeth. At least Friday was nice. I took half a day off in order to squeeze in my first and last trail-ride of the season. We took horses up to McIver Park. I rode with the barn owner Dee and Jen, our horses crammed into Dee’s slant-load trailer. Tag filled up his partition like a loaf of horse-bread in a pan, and the trailer was low to the ground once we managed to get him aboard (he didn’t make it easy). A second trailer from our barn was driven by Carrie and her two girls Jade & Amy and their little horses. It was a nice small group, and we all get along great. Tag was perfectly fine. He had a couple of stupid moments; a little orange cone freaked him out when we crossed one of the roads… he shied at some invisible monster on the trail, but other than that, he was great. He’s comfortable following… dumb horse. He wasn’t used to going down hills… it took a little work to get it right, and by the first half-hour he was pretty comfy with down hills. He crossed a bridge no problem at the heels of Sundance.

Tag would not lead without a huge fight with me. I will work on him next year to get him to be a bit more trusting that I won’t ride him into a bottomless pit or into a hoard of monsters. I let him run a bit in the open areas. He loved that part. He was a sweaty mess at the end and we rode for a long time… so when I jumped off him at the end of the trail ride, my legs went all noodly and I fell on my butt. So graceful. The funny part was when we arrived and I unloaded him from the trailer; all the other people that were there to ride were fascinated with how huge he was. LOL. He got lots of compliments. He did proceed to be a jerk about getting back in the trailer again… but we managed. All in all, I had SO much fun.. you can hear my soul-clearing sigh in one of my little vids below. I wish I could do this every day... it is like all my worries go away when I'm out in saddle, and I always feel so good afterwards, no matter how sore I am.  I forgot how much I love trail-riding—and how 'cleansed' I feel when I am done riding.  Anyway… here are some little movies. It was hard manipulating a phone in saddle, so the movies are short…

:::::::::::::::::::SIGH:::::::::::::::::::::

I'm loud, I know. I love how Tag just glances back at me like: Hey, what gives? Let's go.