Briana’s Blog of Madness

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Well, we sold my old camera and the junker computer, for a whopping total of $75. Good to have, but already partly spent, and we’re going to need to restock toiletries and such in the next week or two. There won’t be enough for the phone bill or hosting, and definitely nothing to put away for moving.

So… We still have the big lot of audio equipment to sell. (see my previous blog/note for a link to the info on it) I also have a couple lots of handcrafted jewelry. I’d prefer to sell the stuff in lots, but I’m willing to sell some of the earrings off individually, and maybe rearrange what’s in the lots, if say, someone wanted all earrings and no necklaces, or something like that.
Here’s some info:

Edit: Removed the images of jewelry and whatnot. I’m not selling it straight to people, I now have a real online store with all my jewelry. You can find it here: http://www.bonanzle.com/booths/brianadragon

I’m willing to make random lots of new earrings if anyone wants them for a flea market, their store, e-bay, or whatever. I’ll give a discount on lots, so they’ll be reasonably priced for resale. I’ll also do custom orders if I have the supplies. You can view a gallery of my work by going HERE. That should give you ideas of what I can do. Contact me if you want something made, and I’ll see what I can do.

Until this stuff sells, I’ve cashed in one batch of MyPoints, and I’m working on earning enough for another. That’ll help with household needs, but not the bills. Here’s hoping the jewelry and audio stuff go quickly!

T’was the night before Yule, and I wasn’t sleeping.
My husband was snoring, and the bird, he was beeping.
Then to our surprise, there arose such a clatter,
We rose from the bed to see what was the matter.
We put on some clothes and looked out the door,
Dangit, I’m sorry, I can’t rhyme anymore!

Anyway, turns out the noise was M-I-L and Zack moving stuff around to make room for the pile of presents to people who were not us. So we’re awake. Earlier than we wanted. We were expecting a call from someone from Craig’s List, a little good news, they were interested in my old camera.

Well, there comes a banging at the door, we’re thinking it’s the guy for the camera. No, it’s this startled looking red-headed young guy who stares at me and says “You got a phone? This guy fell out up here and I think he’s dead.” Holy cr@p! We know the guy right there up the hill, and we’re thinking it’s him, and fearing the worst. Eric grabs the cell and goes running off across the lawn, through the woods that separate the properties, and up to the house, which is in renovation shambles. Fire truck with EMT’s gets here pretty fast. Turns out it’s not the friend we thought, it’s another friend, the family handyman. He’s fallen and hit his head, is bleeding and not looking well. After all is said and done, he’s OK they think, but seems like he may have fallen from a heart attack. Now we try to calm down.

So the guy comes and buys the camera, and the old junker computer, so we have a bit of money now. Cool.

Eric and Zack decide to go to his brother’s house to borrow some games to play. I’m upset I can’t get out of the house to go with them (too much junk in Z’s car), but I use the time to wrap my handbade gifts to the family, and try to feel better that at least I had made gifts, and had something to give.
They get back, Z got a flat tire! Yay, right? It gets better! Some guy backed into the front of his car, then sped off! So add hit & run to the day! The car was dented, but not horribly, and they were stunned but OK. We alternate between laughing at the mess of a holiday and sighing in distress.

So we think the day is getting better… Eric makes and amazing steak with sauteed onions (we splurged for our holiday dinner, it’s only once a year, after all.) I do my honey butter carrots, we all have a wonderful and super-filling meal, then play some board games. Z wins them all, big surprise!

So then Zack is playing with the bird and we get to talking about clipping his nails, which are far too long. After a while of messing about we decide to give Stoli a trim. First clip sends him flying around the room. Second gets a flutter… it gets easier, kinda. Last nail! We figure all is well… think again! Stoli twitches, and I cut the quick, suddenly he’s bleeding all over me. Panic ensues. We go for flour to stop the bleeding. Good luck there. Doesn’t work. Eric gets sent away ’cause he’s getting to emotional. Zack and I try to handle the situation. Flour isn’t working, bird is getting stressed, I’m getting nauseous from stress and concern. Finally, with blood over both of us, I remember the NikStop I have in the bathroom for people’s cuts. I figure we need to try, a hemopheliac bird bleeding like that is not good. I get him to step on the applicator… He squeals and recoils, guess it hit the spot. After a while, the bleeding slows. Whew! We keep watch, and luckily, today Stoli is playful and happy as ever, despite the blood on his feathers.

What a mess! We play some poker, Z cleans us out, though I did OK for a while. I got called Lucky B!tch a lot.

Last night, no sleep, Eric woke up with a headache and a hangover, Z has a hangover and forgot parts of last night. This is what happens when Zack offers up his alcohol. I fortunately, had very little, mostly drank juice.

Some holiday eh? I’m trying to just remember the steak dinner (I’d forgotten what steak tasted like) and the games and the little bit of money. Just the good stuff. But I tell ya, we’re hoping we NEVER have another holiday like that!

Well, as some of you know, things have been kinda tight around here. It’s still tight. We’re not making the kind of progress I’d hoped for yet.
Eric still hasn’t gotten a call back from the new neurologist. He got a new diagnosis and some new meds and seems a little better, but there’s still a long road ahead when it comes to getting him cured, I fear.
I haven’t been sleeping, been working as hard as I can on the store, and seem to have a cold that won’t go away, I’m starting to thing my immune system is suffering from the stress.
We have enough to pay this month’s bills, but next month is still up in the air. I’ve cashed in my MyPoints so we can get necessities from WalMart.
We still need to move too. We’ve gotten a “stay of execution”, if you will, and we can stay where we are for now, but I don’t know how long. We had 2 possibilities fall through. We really want to just get out of GA and up to Maine, but that would take quite a bit of money to pull that off.

We could really use some help to get through this. Neither of us would want a hand-out, but a hand-up would be much appreciated. I figured I’d list off a few things that would make things easier on us, and if there’s anything you can do, maybe you will. We’d sure appreciate it.

• Buy from the store.We get a percentage of every sale, and the more sales we get, the better. I know it’s late for x-mas buying, but people have birthdays, late holiday gifts, buying for yourself, etc. It’s a way you can give some money, but get something in return. [Also, telling your friends about the store and putting links to it on your blogs, webpages, FaceBook, etc, would be very helpful. If you have a site where you can post a review of our work or something, that would be awesome too.]
• Become an affiliate of the store. The link there will lead you to my affiliate join page if you know how to do it already. If you don’t, contact me in the next couple of days, since I’m going to be sending out an instructional e-mail to a friend anyway, I’ll just send it to anyone interested. You get 15% on all sales you generate, so you make money for yourself and us at the same time.
• I have a lot of my handcrafted jewelry that I’d like to sell. My friend’s store went out of business, so I have nowhere to sell it. I’d prefer to sell it as a large lot that you can then resell at a profit. Contact me if you think you’d be interested. (The lot, marked down for wholesale, would be about $150+, but I might be willing to break it into smaller lots like earrings, chokers, etc.)
• If anyone is interested in selling my handcrafted jewelry, I have enough supplies to make a few dozen pairs of earrings. I usually charge $5-7 a pair, but I’ll make a deal for a reseller. I haven’t the time or energy to try auctioning them online anymore, or even Etsy, which I can’t afford anyway. If you’d like me to make up a lot, let me know.
• Coupons. Especially for cash items. We have food stamps, but there are non-edible things we need. Shampoo, razor blades, feminine needs, hygiene products, etc. Contact me if you have some you could send. Nothing store-specific though please, unless it’s for WalMart or Kroger.
• We have a large lot of MIDI audio equipment that needs to be sold as a lot. It’s joint property of hubby & his brother, & we’ll be splitting what it’s sold for. It’s got a value of about $2500, but we’ll take $1000-1500. Only thing on this, you have to be able to come pick it up, we can’t ship it. We also have a digital camera (originally $250, asking $50). **The camera has now been sold. Thank goodness, that’s a little cash on hand.**
• Since we want to get to Maine, Pittsfield in particular, if anyone has any ties to that area, the UU church there, or anything else that might make getting there and getting set up easier, it’d be great. That’s really where we want to be. I’m so homesick it’s not funny, and we’ve done our research, it seems like it would be the perfect fit for us there.
• Anything else you can think of, I guess. We don’t have a car anymore, so we can’t get around, but we have our dial-up internet access, and we can get snail mail, so that’s something.

Right now I’m focusing all I can into the store, since we are starting to get small checks now, and I know it will become more profitable if we just keep working on it. If we can get to Maine, between the store and my crafts, I know we can work out a living. I used to make good money selling my jewelry when I was up there before. Unfortunately, the cost of moving from GA to ME would be pretty steep I’m guessing. But we’d rather save and make the big move (if we can) than get a place here and be struggling constantly in a place we don’t want to be. Plus, since Eric’s neurological problem seems to be environmentally triggered, just gettiong out of this state might help him get better. I know the GA air plays hell on my allergies all year round. I miss clean Maine air.
Anyway, anything you can do would be appreciated. It’s really tough being sick and trying to make everything work on your own. There’s only so much energy in the body, and so much time in the day. A little hand-up would make a world of difference.
Thank you.