Random McRandyPants

And that is actually a pretty apt nickname for me today.  Well, this whole year.  In fact, I think I shall change my internet nickname everywhere to Random McRandyPants.  :)

Not only am I finally reading a good book, but also it gets bonus points for the proper use of the word "alumnus" to refer to one male former student. More bonus points because it's a favorite trope and I'm enjoying it. Yay! The last three books have been just not right.  OK, two of them outright sucked and the third was just vaguely pleasant.  And then...we get to the sex.  I guess I have been spoiled reading good fanfic, because I was like, what?  He kisses her and then they're having sex?  Where's the foreplay?  Where's the making sure she gets hers?  This guy has a reputation and the girls line up to do him and he's all five minutes in the sack the first time he makes love to the love of his life?  Apollo he is not, for sure.  I mean, he at least apologizes for not lasting five minutes.

Tonight, at OTB, this girl sat at a table near me, and her jean skirt was so short, I was sure she was gonna flash the whole restaurant.  Then, when she and her date were walking away from the table, he puts his hand out, right behind her ass, but then decided not to, I guess. I thought it was funny because his hand immediately went to her ass area instead of the small of her back.  Then, "Oooooops.  We're at On the Border, not the local biker bar."  lol

Sold two things today, one on Amazon and one on eBay.  Yay!  Two more things out the door to new homes.  I wish I could figure out what days the mailman actually comes to our house.  This is the no-mail-gettingest place I've ever lived in in my life.  At least three days a week there is nothing in the mail.  He doesn't even slow down as he walks past our house.

Still haven't been able to get hold of my girlfriend to see if she and her husband are doing Thanksgiving this year.  When he's deployed, I don't even bother asking, I just show up, but since he's home again this year (and I'm happy he's out of Iraq, really!), I have to confirm, just to attempt courtesy.  I do hope they are, though, because I look forward to seeing those Basic Training Airmen every year and hearing their stories about their hometowns and why they enlisted.  And since I'm a dirty old lady, I look forward to checking them out.  I'll be honest.  :)  A girl's gotta have *some* fun.

Moving

Moving is again in the top of my things to think about; it seems probable that it will be later than April, giving me a little more time to cull, donate, sell and otherwise divest myself of my worldly goods.  I'm a little more hopeful today that I can actually achieve this before the moving date without giving things away willy-nilly.

I need all the hope I can get.

And, I made two sales this week on Bonanza, and one on Amazon, so it's been a good week as far as sales go.  I would dearly love to sell something every single day, and/or to schedule a pickup from someone off the recycling list every single day.

Thanks go out into the ether to those people, both known to me and unknown, who have helped me during the last year by giving my things a new home, either through free-cycling or through my online sales sites, or through just plain old cash in hand.

Things don't always go the way they should

I'm human, like almost everybody who reads this blog.  All four of you.  lol  This post may be long and a bit of a pity party, so I won't blame you if you stop reading before the end.  I did say I was writing this blog mostly for myself, right?  :D

I've been unemployed a long time, and that in itself is discouraging.  Since I've been unemployed, my health has worsened, and that is also discouraging.

Last year, I started the year out with high hopes that this would be the year that I made big changes in my life - decluttering being at the tippy-top of my list.  Continuing to see my doctor regularly, getting my disability approved and starting my daughter's senior year of high school were up there, too.

I made pretty good progress on the declutter thing, right up until about April, when things went to hell in a handbasket.  My daughter was pregnant, and her boyfriend's "guardian" was PUSHING for them to get married, "right this very minute" practically.  Once someone actually explained the reasons for his big rush, I understood.  I might have been, probably would have been, much less resistant to the whole idea had he had the courtesy to sit down and tell me these things himself.  But, he's a my-way-or-the-highway kind of guy and neither likes nor trusts me and never felt the need to explain a single thing to me, no matter how politely I asked.  The dislike and lack of trust is mutual.

So, I'm derailed right in the middle of my great declutter momentum by the plans to get my daughter married.  Again, I was resistant, because she's my only daughter and I wanted some effing say in how her wedding went.  I did not get much - I think I put my foot down on the precise location of the ceremony itself in the park.  On the plus side, I did get to actually go to it, so I guess I should have counted myself lucky.

Along about June, maybe even right toward the end of the Great Wedding Debacle of 2010 (my debacle, not the wedding's), I get notice from my landlady/roommate that we have to be out of the house by the end of June.  I'm all freaked out by this, because, as I said above, I have been unemployed for a while (it'll be three whole entire years on March 5, less than a month from now) and Miss Not-Potatohead-yet is getting married, and Mr Potatohead's parents are leaving the state and, and, and, and.  My parents kindly and generously offered to help me out with an apartment and all expenses thereto for a period not to exceed one year.  Did I mention kind?  Or generous?   This was not normal behavior for my family, so I was astounded and amazedly grateful.  I said Thank You aloud as often as I appropriately could, and offered to help with whatever little things needed doing, since I was unemployed and had nothing better to do.  They were Not Interested.  I don't know how else to express gratitude other than saying it or showing it.

Kindness and generosity in my family sometimes comes with strings.  In this case, I had to live in the complex my mom had picked out, and in order to stay on budget, could not have an apartment with washer/dryer connections.  Have you ever had to keep a baby clothed without a washer or dryer?  But I digress.  We're not there yet.  We also had to move a month earlier than I planned, and move into an apartment on the third floor.  I could have waited two weeks and gotten on the second floor, but mom said that was just too long.

So here I am, with a very pregnant daughter and a pretty immobile self, moving into an apartment on the third floor of a complex that my mom insisted on.  We get a big old truck full of stuff moved and I try to get started on the declutter thing.  It's not going well, but neither is it going poorly.  BabyDaddy finishes his senior year stuff and turns 18.  He moves over here with us (originally, he was going to move with us when we did, not three months later).  My kid works on finishing high school through a special self-paced program for at-risk students, so that she can be done with high school before the baby enters the big, wide world.  She does extremely well, much to my only-slightly surprised delight, though is not quite finished in time for Baby Potatohead to make his appearance.

Early in September, my former landlady/roommate tells me the house has sold, and the remainder of my stuff must be out by the end of September.  Since I had no money, she paid for the U-Haul and paid Mr Potatohead and my neighbor to do the heavy lifting.

Once Baby Potatohead enters the world, everything changes, as everyone who's ever had a child can tell you.  Other Gramma comes to visit for a few days, and we share the snuggling with baby duties, so that the parents can get some sleep. 

Life goes on.  The baby grows.  I try my hardest to leave the kids alone, to allow them the time and space to become a family in their own right.  That's seriously difficult when we're all living in the same two-bedroom apartment.  And when the laundry piles up and starts to smell bad.  And when no one in the place does dishes but me.

I am beginning to make progress again on my decluttering, with Mr Potatohead's assistance.  Frequently, he gets a wild hair while the rest of the house is sleeping, and I wake up to a living room that has been totally rearranged, most of the time so it's easier to navigate and harder to trip over your own two feet.  Time passes and Mr Potatohead's entrance into the Air Force draws nearer and nearer.  I start making lists of things that need to be done, so that once we're a man down (the strongest man, of course), we girls and Baby Potatohead can still get things done without our wee strong man to lift and carry.

The last week before Mr Potatohead left went by in a rush.  All of a sudden, it was the night before.  I knew that he had to be at the MEPS center by noon and to the hotel by 2000.  Just as I'm getting ready to go to bed, Mrs Potatohead tells me that we're leaving for the MEPS center by 0830.  Um, what?  Apparently, they have a few places they need to go before going to downtown Dallas, and they neglected to tell me about any of them before that very moment.  The trip downtown was not a joy.  I spent eight hours that day, sitting in a car and doing nothing else.  I was in so damn much pain when I got home that even though I was practically starving, I couldn't eat. 

So, Mr Potatohead is now gone to Lackland for Basic Military Training.  He'll be there until about the end of March, when he will then begin Air Force Technical Training, aka Tech School.  By the end of April, I will be living alone, a good four months before I ever thought I would, since Mrs Potatohead will still not be 18 yet.

During this entire time, my mom has been oh, so, generously paying the rent and the other utilities (not my cell phone bill), and mentioning to me at every opportunity how much she's spending and what she's putting off because she can't afford to do it while I'm being taken care of (she calls it my free ride).  I mentioned the strings before, right?  Well, with mom, this is one of those strings.  I have to put up with her constant haranguing about my lack of responsibility, my lack of respect, my lack of gratitude, my lack of any decent qualities whatsoever, and do it all with a smile on my face.  She doesn't believe I'm disabled.  I mean, she's 15 years older than I am, and she's not disabled, is she?  I'm fat, and that's why I can't get around.  I'm a slob, and a never-ending disgrace to the family.  And, I'm a terrible mom, because I can't even provide for my own child, much less the additions to the family.  OK, mom, I get it.  I'm a loser, might as well kill me.  I just wanna smack her sometimes and say, "Hello?  Did it ever occur to you to encourage me, or tell me even one thing I'm doing right?"  I mustn't do that, though, because it would be, yes, disrespectful.  And, apparently, she never hears a single Thank You, ever.

So, back to where I started this entry.  lol

I don't have a job.  I look for jobs, but I know my physical limitations.  Yes, I could get a job at Blockbuster, but how long would I have it when I can't stand on my feet for two hours, much less eight?  I couldn't begin to survive a shift at McDonald's or Arby's or someplace like that.  Am I giving myself excuses?  Should I try it anyway?  I just don't know.  Besides that, in three years, and hundreds of applications and resumes sent out, I've gotten two in-person interviews, and two phone interviews doing the sort of thing I was doing before I was laid off.  Logically, I don't see how that could possibly be my fault, but the other part of me is sure that somehow I'm responsible for the lack of response to my applications and resumes.  I mean, I'm applying to jobs minutes after they're posted.  I'm applying to jobs in retail, for crying out loud.  I don't think I can do any better than that.  Maybe I should be "pounding the pavement" as my father says.  It seems to me, though, that I can only look for a job so many hours of the day.  Beyond that, I believe I have to do something that will actually bring in money, not just waste gas money I don't have and use up clean clothes that can't be washed without, again, using money I don't have (we are not allowed to do laundry at my parents' house) or piling everybody and everything into the car and going to the in-laws.  And hoping they're not home.  I like them just fine, but it's awkward to sit in someone's house for hours reading a book or doing whatever on the laptop.  Some people feel the need to interact with other people when they're in the same room.  It's when I'm at their house forcing myself to talk when I'd rather be doing almost anything else that I miss my mother the most.  She and I could sit someplace and read and drink our drinks and chat occasionally, and be perfectly happy with the time we spent together.

I am very limited as to what I can lift, even more so lately, with my elbow acting up.  Picking up a book hurts like mad, so you can imagine me picking up a pan full of food, or a box of anything, or a basket of laundry.  Do you know how hard it is to function without using your left arm?  I never imagined it would be so difficult to get up, or sit down, or pull the covers up, or take my clothes off, or God forbid, hook my bra, even before my left arm started hurting so badly.  Yes, I cannot actually get dressed by myself.  Does that suck, or what?  How am I supposed to go on job interviews (should I actually get one) when I can't dress myself?  Even more to the point, how am I supposed to do that once the Potatoheads are all gone on to wherever Tech School is located?  There's a confidence-builder, let me tell you.  Some people might be able to get by with forgoing the bra under their clothes and still look professional.  I am NOT one of them.  I keep imagining the interview question about the weird flaps on the back of my blouse, and the looks from the people who figure it out without asking.  On Monday, I did try to get dressed a different way, but I couldn't even get my left arm through the strap, and hurt my elbow so badly trying that I had to get Mrs Potatohead to help me take the damn thing off.  I never made it out of the house that day.

During the last month, my mom has made it plain that she is done with my loser self, and will not help me any more (boy, that was the fastest year ever).  I stress her out, and I am not the only person on the planet with problems, and the world does not revolve around me, and she has reached the point that my lack of respect and lack of gratitude have gotten on her last nerve.  She doesn't care whether or not I can take care of my financial obligations, so long as none of my inability affects her credit (she co-signed for my electricity and my lease even though she was paying the bills).  When all this started in June, the idea was that they would help for a year, max, and maybe would continue to help if I actually got a job and was >trying< to help myself.  Obviously, since I don't have a job, I haven't been looking hard enough, because there are Help Wanted signs everywhere, for god's sake.  Now, it's down to some paraphrase of "it's been seven months and that's bloody long enough, and don't call me, I'll call you, but I never actually will because I really don't like you much, so bugger off."  My most recent email told me that when the Potatoheads are gone, she'll pay the "break-the-lease" fee and hopes that I have a plan for getting out of this apartment, because I DO have to get out of this apartment, even if I can pay the bills, because she doesn't want her name on anything related to me, and she guesses I'm in a real pickle.   I can hear her cackling nastily.

I haven't gone this long without paid work since I started working at age 15.  That fact is demeaning enough to my self-esteem without any special help from my mom.

As for decluttering, I have a hard time distributing things once I've sorted through them.  When I have to get up every time I've decided what to do with something, it seriously interferes with my momentum, especially since getting up requires about two minutes of me ungracefully maneuvering, or me calling someone to come help me get up.  I'm having trouble getting away from the idea that I should sleep at night and work on decluttering during the day.   This is especially troublesome because I can't remember the last time I actually slept before 4 in the morning.  Right now, it's 6 AM where I am, and I've been up all night.  I need to organize the stuff I have listed online, but where?  I can't find a clear space to put a shelf, even if I had a clear shelf to put somewhere.  I am getting so frustrated with all of it.

I get wild hairs to cook up something, then can't find stuff in the kitchen, because the roaches have made me really resistant to putting anything in the cupboards.  I'm obsessed with washing everything as soon as that it gets dirty, because leaving it sit for even a few minutes might attract more of those nasty critters, not that I don't wash things again before I use them, because who knows whether or not a roach has crawled on it while it was sitting there drying?  Most of our packaged food, except the cans, is in the freezer, because at least the bugs can't get in that.  And if you think they can't get in bags or boxes, think again, baby!

I have so much stuff to give away that I don't have anywhere to put it until someone comes to get it.  I would like to organize it in some way so that I can have a little giveaway/apartment sale so that it goes to happy new homes.   Even when I list things on the local not-freecycle lists, I only get good responses about 30% of the time.  I have good stuff to give away, man, why don't people want it?

I'm horribly afraid that I won't get it all done, and something will happen and Mrs Potatohead will have to deal with all this the way I had to deal with my mother's crap eight years ago (and am still dealing with it). 

Without healthcare and therefore without meds, all my health issues are going untreated, and except for my blood sugar, which I can check as often as I want, I have no idea where any of my lab levels are, whether lacking medication is helping or hurting.  I do know that I hurt a lot worse, and have more trouble sitting or walking or doing much of anything.  My blood sugar is fine, since my diabetes problem is hypoglycemia, rather than hyper.  As long as I eat five or six times a day, I'm usually fine.

I have signed up for as many of the survey things as I can, though I make very little money doing it.  Some of these women who refer me make hundreds of dollars every month doing these things, and I just wonder how much time they're spending at it, because I don't have that much time to just sit and hit disqualify after disqualify after disqualify.  Now that I think about it, I am probably just in a weird demographic that no one is actually interested in or selling to.  That'd be pretty funny, though not haha funny. 

Points of encouragement:  I'm selling pretty steadily on Amazon since I started listing there.  I made enough in December to pay January's bills, but not enough in January to even pay one February bill.  Slow but steady.  I do need it to speed up some and become a little more steady.   God knows I have enough stuff to sell to keep it up for months yet.

I've had a friend offer to pay my cell phone bill, which is so far behind the phone is turned off.  I'm trying to swallow my pride and decide that it would be OK to let someone not related to me help me with what, to me, is a large amount of money.

Baby Potatohead is a joy to be around, and is really a very good baby.  His mama is lucky he doesn't take after her.  lol

Mr Potatohead is surviving Basic OK.  Mrs Potatohead has gotten two phone calls,  one post card and one letter (not a real letter, but a packet of information).  We're looking forward to the arrival, any day now, of the first real letter, which is apparently 14 pages long.

Last week, I got some leads for places that are actually hiring, right here in the area.  Once the weather stops blowing down from the Arctic Circle, I'll get out and go see some people.  I'll even hope.  For a little while.

If you've read this far, you deserve a prize.  What would you like?  I have thousands of books.....oooh, and rocks, too.  I have pretty rocks.  :D

It's been an ice cube, y'all!

No, not really.

We have had four or five days in a row with sub-freezing temps and lots of precipitation.  Though I spent four years in Missouri and can drive in this stuff, I chose to stay off the road, so that the other Texans, some of whom you'd think had never even SEEN snow on TV, would not kill me.  Therefore, I am still alive.

I've spent a lot of time reading, and playing with the grandbaby, and perusing pictures on AFWingMOMs' Facebook page.  If you know of anyone who has a relative in Basic Military Training at Lackland, tell them about AFWingMOMs, so that maybe they can see a picture or two of their loved one.  AFWingMoms also has a web page that is not on Facebook, so there are two places to look, and to give and get support while a loved one is gone for two months.  (It's almost like they disappear from the face of the planet, particularly if they don't write or call.)  There are also discussion topics for what to bring to graduation and what NOT to do while on base.  lol

I had several things listed on eBay, since they are doing their free listing thing, but only a pair of pants sold, and so far, I have not gotten paid for them.  I hate it when they don't pay for days, and I'm just about ready to report them for nonpayment, and then they pay and wonder what's taking me so long to get the damn thing out to them.  Brats.

Tomorrow is another Monday, lucky me.  I will try to get to those book reviews I still have to do.  Sheesh.  Just can't seem to make myself write them up.

My first Amazon "experiment"

Well, I thought I'd see how a person could make any money offering books, CDs and DVDs for a penny on Amazon.  I mean, I'm competing against that price whenever I list stuff.

So, I listed a book I got free for a one penny sales price.  And the experiment worked.

I just listed the book yesterday as soon as I'd finished writing the review, and it sold this evening.

With the Amazon built-in shipping, I made a whopping $1.66 for that book.  But wait, there's more!  I also had to pay for shipping to ship it to its new owner, to the tune of $3.07.

Basically, I can list books (let's just leave it at books, OK?) for a penny, but I lose about a buck and a half on the transaction.

Bottom line?  My minimum price for a break even transaction is about $1.50 for a book.  That's good to know.

Nothing Important Happened Today

Bonus points if you know from whence that came.

I got a little bit of stuff out the door to a new owner, who knows several families recently affected by fire in their homes, so more stuff may go soon from her referrals.

Moved some stuff around to make it easier to access once Mr Potatohead leaves for Basic Training tomorrow.  OMG, it's tomorrow!  :(

Held Baby Potatohead while he slept.  I love doing that.  He also helped me list things on Amazon by pounding on the laptop, and helped me hold my Snapple bottle so it wouldn't run away from me.

Made some guacamole in the middle of the night.  It tasted better than the chips, so I ate it by itself.  I may have already told you this.

Got my car fixed and got the title in my hot little hand.

Got a couple dozen new items listed on Amazon, and shipped something to Norway (!).

What I found tonight

Because it's tonight until I go to bed, you know.

Anyway, in a box near the box with my high school pompoms was a small box with dozens of glass vials in it.  About 25 of them have essential oil (already mixed with a carrier oil), most of which appear to be orange oil. 

Now, there's an item that stumps me as to where to sell it.  lol

Gotta lotta cleanin' done

Actually, it wasn't me at all.  My son-in-law got a wild hair and decided to clean the living room.  Where before we had a very narrow passageway through boxes and other things, now more than half of the living is passable.  There's even the Suburban third seat clear now, so I have someplace to sit while I'm sorting stuff.   Through his sorting, I came across the TV remote I'd been looking for since we moved, and an art book that I've listed on Amazon, as well as a small bag of heirloom linens that belong to a client.

I don't know what got into him, but I appreciate it muchly.

Bzz - Dymo Labelmaker

I got my Bzzkit in the mail a week or so ago, and have already unpacked it and used it, of course.

I'll write a proper review of it after a few more uses, but first impressions?  It's a good weight and fits well in my hand.  The keyboard is difficult for this qwerty-trained girl to use.  It's worse than hunt and peck!  I don't like the little black stuff that comes off the label every time I print.  They couldn't come up with a better way to print a label?

The labels are a great size, and the font size is customizable, with multiple lines and everything!  I've already used it to organize my online listing items better.

Fine Print:  I'm a BzzAgent and I got this Dymo Label Maker for free from BzzAgent, to use and share my personal opinions about it.

The great world of Amazon and other online sales

I made much use of the eBay promo allowing me to list 100 items every month for nothing, only paying final value fees if something sold.  I did sell several items, but certainly nothing like I wanted to.

I "sold" several things on Listia, where the buyers only pay for shipping.

I found a new selling website called Bonanza, where I sold a group of things to one person, and have had no other activity on there as yet.

However, I started listing things on Amazon on a whim, and my stuff started rolling out the door!  I listed a couple DVDs, a couple CDs, a few books and a glut of tarot decks.  Other stuff has sold, and mostly, it's been the tarot decks flying off to new homes.  One item sold for over $100!  For a tarot deck! 

I just got on there tonight and listed a few books I found while I was unpacking a box.  Three are from the Piers Anthony Incarnations of Immortality series, which I read about 20 years ago, and loved a lot.  I've tried other Piers Anthony, most notably his Xanth series, and just couldn't get into them. 

Anyway, here are links to the three I have listed:

On a Pale Horse: Book One of Incarnations of Immortality
Bearing an Hourglass :Incarnations 2
For Love of Evil :Incarnations 6

All are First Editions and have never been read, if you know someone who collects First Editions or Piers Anthony.

Two more items listed on Amazon

I got two new (in shrinkwrap) CDs listed on my Amazon marketplace.

On another note, but the same one, really, I had a fairly successful weekend of selling online, and have to mail a dozen packages this week.  Now, if I can just get that level of success mapped over to other areas of my life....

Busy weekend

This weekend has been beyond busy, with lots of auctions ending, and putting stuff up on the new site.  I have twelve packages ready to go out, with six of them paid for.

I listed my truck up on craigslist, and have already gotten two responses to it.  It's only been an hour.  Sheesh.  I mean, good, because I want to get rid of it to have something more useful to me, but unexpected.

Tomorrow I have to go to an unemployment meeting, mandatory, at 9am.  I guess that's technically later today.  Ugh.  I hate mandatory meetings, much less first thing in the morning, when I haven't been able to get to sleep the night before. 

The cats all went to the shelter last week, and I miss them.  I wish that I'd had the money to keep them, but since they weren't even mine, I guess I just have to live with what is, rather than what I wish.

Books, books and more books

I have hundreds, no, thousands of books in my home.  Books are among the things I most enjoy and prize and among the things I'm downsizing and decluttering, in an effort to make my post-life cleanup as easy as possible for my daughter and her husband.   Not that I'm going anywhere anytime soon, just that despite eight years, the memory of cleaning out my mother's house after her death is FRESH in my mind.  It was a hideous experience, and one I will not wish on my own kid and grandkid(s).

I have First Editions, autographed books, antique books and "trashy" romance novels.  I have reference books, text books and teacher manuals.  I have self-help books and Dummies books.  And, of course, I have kid books.  My favorite among those is about the squirrel, Miss Suzy  I so loved this book when I was a kid.  I might even not get rid of it.  Baby Potatohead has to get stories read to him sometime, right?

I look around my room, which is where I am right now, and I long for the day when listing books will be as easy as just looking at the book.  Yeah, I know, it seems a little big-brotherish to me, too, but oh, for an easier way to list all these darn things.

For instance, here's one I can see on the dresser.  I have the hardback, of course, because if I really like an author or a subject, I want to get the books that will hold up best under repeated reading, and yes, I do read books more than just once or twice.

I love Anne McCaffrey - all the Pern books, all the Pegasus books, all the Acorna books - and own almost all of them in hardcover.  I did read a romance she read and um, really didn't like that one.  Other than that, if AM wrote it, I've read it and liked it.  I've continued to read stuff she's "written" with her son, Todd, I think, after her death.  The style is not the same, and I've enjoyed them all the same.

I can see two, count 'em, two hardcover editions of Bullfinch's Mythology.  I'm sure one was mine and the other was my mother's.  I probably even have several more around here somewhere.  My mother believed that if a book was worth recommending to students, it was worth having several copies, so she could loan (lend?) it out to them if they couldn't get it themselves.  She was a teacher, by the way.  English teacher by day (she graduated from college the same year I graduated from high school) and other odd, strange and bizarre things by night - astrology, numerology, tarot, world religions, mythology (she favored Egyptian, where I favor Greco-Roman), , magick, etc.

I see two Robert Heinlein hardcovers - Job: A Comedy of Justice and Friday.  Of course, the links don't take you to the hardcover books, probably because no one selling on Amazon has them listed. 

In addition to that, I have an entire box (more than one to be honest, but only one within view), full to overflowing, of paperback romances - the steamy stuff.  I've read a LOT of romance novels, and the older I get, the more I like the ones that have sex in them.  The ones where the two main characters never even kiss during their "courtship" are just not realistic, and in my opinion, they're generally written in a juvenile style. 

Of course, I also have my foot-and-a-half tall stack of library books, because buying books at this point in my life is just not useful.  I mean, what's the point of getting rid of books to declutter when I just buy more that I might not read again for three or four years, or even longer?

So, authors, I read your books.  I don't buy many anymore, and I'm sorry not to contribute to your pocketbook, particularly if I really enjoy your work, but logic and selfishness wins out on this one, I'm afraid.

I'm experimenting with different ways to send my books to new homes.  I use listia, eBay, Amazon, paperbackswap and goodreads right now.  If you know of other places to list used books of different types, please let me know.  It'll take me a while to get them all gone, so I have time to try out different ideas and sites.  I am obviously open to sites that don't involve me getting any actual money in exchange.