When Greed Backfires

A true story about the benefit of fighting back against lowball offers for the things you want to sell.

Heron
My stepmom made this gorgeous stained glass panel for the door between a bathroom and the pool area.

My stepmom is an accomplished stain glass artist. For years, she produced stain glass artwork ranging from simple window ornaments like angels and snowmen to gorgeous window panes depicting wildlife like herons, dolphins, and horses. She was serious about her art endeavors and, over time, accumulated a massive inventory of raw materials — glass, soldering lead, lead cane — and the patterns, equipment, and supplies she needed to do the work.

Stained Glass Inventory
This is about half the glass she had to sell. To the left, still covered in paper, are at least 50 very large sheets. And then she found a cooler (of all things) filled with more glass sheets. Even the scraps had value — and she had about 50 pounds of that.

She stopped working with glass a few years ago and, since then, all her materials and supplies languished in a shed off the patio and in various storage spaces around the house and garage. When I came by in late autumn on my way south, she talked a bit about selling all this stuff. When I returned in January on my way north, she had taken steps to do just that. She’d called the owner of a stained glass shop about 45 minutes away by car — we’ll call him John — and made arrangements to have him look at it and possibly buy it.

John warned her from the get-go that he would not be offering a lot of money for what she had, but he didn’t give her any dollar amounts. She and my dad decided that they wouldn’t take any offer under $1,000. There was a lot of stuff and it was all in excellent, if not perfect, condition.

The Offer

John drove up one afternoon with an assistant (presumably to help him carry everything out) when my stepmom was out but I was at the house with my Dad.

We showed him the shed full of glass sheets, some of them as large as 24 x 36 inches in size. (This isn’t the stuff you get at Hobby Lobby, folks.) There had to be hundreds of sheets of glass in there in a wide range of colors. He said, “Well, these are the colors your wife wanted,” he told my dad. “That doesn’t mean other people want these colors.”

Cane in Tubes
My stepmom had several PVC tubes of 5-foot lead cane lengths that hung in the garage.

We showed him the PVC tubes full of lead cane hanging from racks in the garage. “No one uses this stuff anymore,” John said.

While not everything else was out (yet), there were bezels and patterns and kits and soldering lead on a table for him to see. He didn’t seem to care about them.

He turned to my dad and said, “I’ll give you $250 for all of it.”

My dad had some trouble keeping his temper. It wasn’t just a lowball offer. It was an insulting offer. I think that at one point he said that he could melt down the lead and sell it as lead bars and get more money than that.

John was not happy. Apparently he thought he’d be able to breeze in and get it all for next to nothing. He said, “I told your wife I wouldn’t offer much. Did you think I would pay retail prices? I came all the way up here to buy this.”

But my dad wasn’t going to budge.

John left. When he got to his car, he called my stepmom. She reported later that he offered her $350 and sounded angry. She said no and apologized for making him come so far for nothing.

John left, but it would not be the last we heard of him.

Facebook Marketplace

Band saw
Need to cut glass? This bandsaw made for glass cutting was in like new condition with all instructions. There was also a grinder and cane stretcher.

As much as I absolutely detest Facebook, I have to admit that its Marketplace feature is a great way to sell stuff. My stepmom is on Facebook and posted a listing there later that day.

The responses started coming immediately. The buyers started coming the next day.

By that time, we’d gathered together everything she had to sell, putting it on folding tables inside the screened-in lanai. The shed with the glass was right there. So when people came, they could browse everything easily. After some uncertainty on how to price the glass, my stepmom settled on a price of $8/square foot. This was a lot cheaper than someplace like Hobby Lobby. And it was also cheaper than what John was selling it for in his shop.

We knew that because lots of the folks that came over the next week or so usually bought their glass at John’s place. Now they were buying it from my stepmom. Apparently, the glass colors she liked were the same glass colors other artists — including the artist’s that shopped at John’s place — liked. (Who knew? LOL.) As for no one using lead cane, well tell that to the woman who bought a whole tube of it — 30+ 5-foot lengths.

Although the first two sales were disappointingly small, when the real artists started coming, the sales got bigger. By the middle of the second day, my stepmom had already taken in more than John had offered for everything — and the shed full of glass looked as full as ever. (I took to yelling out, “Stuff it, John!” every time someone left with glass he could have sold.) Soon she’d taken in $1,000 and there was still a ton of stuff left. Then more than $2,000, with one woman buying $845 worth of glass and lead. Yesterday, my stepmom told me she’d taken in more than $3,000 and there was still stuff left.

Of course, all of these profits could have been John’s if he’d made a reasonable offer for what my stepmom had.

The Best Part

While it’s true that dealing with a constant stream of strangers coming to the house can be a pain in the butt, my stepmom and dad don’t really mind it. My stepmom is retired and is around the house most of the time anyway. My dad works part time and is home in the afternoon. They don’t have to have people coming through the house because everything is setup outside, on the lanai and adjacent shed. There were no weird characters. Everyone was a legitimate glass artist and everyone bought something.

And my stepmom and I think that my dad likes talking to the husbands that sometimes come along on the shopping trip.

My stepmom is happy about how things turned out. Not only is she getting rid of stuff she doesn’t need, but she’s bringing in good money to do it. Because she bought some of the glass so long ago, she’s actually profiting on some of the sales because the going price is higher than what she paid years ago. In the end, she might get back everything she spent on what she’s selling now.

And the buyers? They’re thrilled. They’re getting good quality glass at a good price. They’re chatting with my stepmom and learning from her. She’s giving away a lot of the pattern magazines she’s accumulated.

So it’s a win-win-win — for everyone except cheapskate John.

Stuff it, John!

Staying Focused with a Daily Planner

I return to my custom daily planner sheets to stay focused, waste less time, make more of my day, and be more productive.

As I’ve aged, I’ve been struggling with productivity. I just can’t seem to do as much in a day as I used to.

The Way Things Were

I remember the height of my writing days. I’d sit down to write a book I was under contract to produce by a certain date. I’d start with an outline or table of contents and I’d sit at my desk for up to 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, to knock out the book, chapter by chapter. During that time, I didn’t do much of anything else. But when I was done, I’d take a few weeks to goof off and have fun. That’s when I learned to fly helicopters and did some of my best solo trips. And then I’d get back to work on the next book.

I wrote 85 books from 1991 through 2016. That’s an average of about 3 1/2 books per year. I know that one year, I wrote 10.

In the beginning of my writing career, I also did consulting work, led hands-on computer training classes for a few organizations, and wrote articles for various magazines. Near the end of it, I was juggling flights and clients for my helicopter charter and agricultural services company. I also started a bunch of hobbies, some of which held my interest for years.

But these days, I find myself kind of drifting, spending too much time on social media — don’t we all? — and not getting the things done that I need or want to get done.

Return of the Daily Planner

Daily Planner Page
My Daily Planner form has the sections that work best for me.

A few years ago, when I realized I was struggling with focus, I tried a bunch of different daily planner solutions, finally coming up with my own custom daily planner sheets to meet my needs. I printed a bunch of planner pages up, put them in a looseleaf binder on my kitchen countertop, and started each day by planning it out.

The planner pages have several sections:

  • Heading. This is simple: just the date and day of the week. What’s odd is that since going freelance in 1990, I haven’t had “weekends” the way other people do. I always worked when there was work to do and did personal things or goofed off when there wasn’t. The only time weekends meant anything after 1990 was when I was married to a man chained to a M-F, 9-5 business schedule. My weekends were his weekends. Fortunately, I have’t had to deal with that for a long time. But I still specify what day of the week it is because there are certain things I can’t do on weekends, like make calls to certain businesses.
  • Priorities for Today. This is three lines with check boxes for the things I think are very important to get done that day. I usually have at least one item I put in this section.
  • To-Do List. This is 17 lines with check boxes for other things I want to get done that day. I try to fill this up with specific achievable tasks in no particular order. And yes, sometimes I put very easy things on the list; this ensures I check something off that day.
  • For Tomorrow. This is four lines with check boxes for things I don’t necessarily want to do that day but should get done the next day or soon.
  • Schedule. This is a box with half-hour time slots starting at 5 AM and ending at 8:30 PM. I use this area two ways:
    • Appointment schedule. If I have a known appointment or task that need to be done at a certain time, I block it in, along with any travel time. This can be telephone or video calls, doctor or vet appointments, or lunch dates. Anything that I have to do at a specific time.
    • Time Use. I fill in the space around any appointments with how I’ve actually spent that time as the day goes on. For example, it’ll take me about an hour to write this blog post so that’ll be plugged in at the 7:30 to 8:30 slot: “Blog about planner.” This makes me conscious of how I spend my time and how I waste it.
  • Health. The health section lets me log water intake — I don’t get thirsty so I don’t drink and am always dehydrated; this reminds me to drink — and various exercise and diet stats from my watch and, when I’m dieting, my calorie counter app. I’ll admit that I don’t use this section as much as I should, but I keep it there in case I want to start using it again.

Things are different now. I’m traveling, currently along the east coast, on my boat. There is no spacious kitchen counter where I can leave my Daily Planner pages. But I have some pages with me and the original PDF file to print from. I pulled a page out to consider it and wound up handing it off to Jason while he was on board. He was enthusiastic about it. That got me thinking that maybe I should start using it again, too.

So I did.

Yesterday was the first day in a long time. I listed my things to do and recorded how I spent my time. I found that it kept me very focused and made me more productive. How? Well when I finished doing some things and found myself idle, I’d say to myself “What next?” instead of reaching for my phone or tablet and wasting a bunch of time online. I’d look through the uncompleted tasks, pick one I felt ready to do, and get it started.

I repeated this throughout the day. The result: I finished nine out of 12 list items (but unfortunately, not the priority item) and made progress on a tenth item that could not be finished until Monday. Would I have gotten as much done if I didn’t use the Planner yesterday? I don’t think so.

Today, I planned another day. That Priority item is back and I’ll do it when I finish this. (This blog post, by the way, is not on the planner — although it should have been; I really needed a new blog post. I’ll add it to my schedule but not to the To Do list so I can check it off. That’s cheating.) Throughout the day, I might add a few more items; there are currently a total of 13.

And to further encourage me to stick with it, I’ve ordered a looseleaf notebook with a clipboard front cover so I can leave the list where I’ll see it, whether I’m on the boat or back at home.

Planning on My Mind

Planning is really on my mind lately. I’m writing a multi-part series for my Great Loop blog about cruise planning and have created some custom planning pages for that, too.

Although I have all kinds of planning tools on my laptop, tablet, and phone, I find that pen and paper are the best tools for me. As Jason pointed out this morning, mobile devices are distracting. He’s right! I saw his text about that and replied to it when I reached for my phone to use the calculator. And then I forgot to use the calculator until I got back to this post and realized I needed to do some math. Best to leave the mobile devices on the table or in your pocket.

Any thoughts about this? Share them in the comments.

Letting Things Go

I think about my inability to “let things go” and realize, with the help of a friend, that it might not be such a bad thing.

The Atheist's Guide to ChristmasYears ago, I went to a Solstice party at a friend’s house near my home in Washington state. This was back when I tried to spend the entire winter at home — maybe 2013? — before I realized that I needed more sun in my life than that latitude would ever offer in December and January.

The party was well attended by the “freethinkers” group I was a member of. We didn’t celebrate Christmas, but we celebrated the Solstice. I celebrated it as the end of the ever-shortening days and the return of the sun.

We had a bonfire (of course) and we gathered around it. There was snow on the ground and we’d spent some time sledding down a hill nearby before it got dark (at around 4:30 PM). One of the partiers handed out slips of paper and pens. We each wrote down something we wanted to let go of forever on that slip of paper. I’m pretty sure I wrote down something to do with my wasband or divorce or the dull, dead-end life I’d had with him. Then we each burned our slip of paper, symbolically destroying these things to remove them from our lives forever.

Ah, if only it were that easy!

As they say, time marches on. I’ve changed a lot since that winter night spent gathered around a fire with friends. I’ve achieved amazing things: building a new home on an amazing piece of land, growing my helicopter business far beyond what it could have been in Arizona, starting a successful jewelry-making business, exploring new hobbies like beekeeping and watercolor painting, and, more recently retiring from my work as helicopter pilot, selling the assets, and diving head first into a life cruising along the east coast in my own boat as a US Coast Guard-certified boat Captain.

Maria and Pups
Me and my pups during a recent stay at the dock in my dad’s backyard. While I’m not convinced that he fully understands what makes me tick, at least he has a clue, accepts the way I am, and doesn’t try to tell me how to manage my life. I appreciate that.

I’ve also resolved to keep toxic people out of my life, a decision that has cut me off from a handful of friends and most family members. After being in a mentally abusive relationship for so long — and not even realizing how it was affecting me until long after it was over — I simply decided I didn’t want to take shit from anyone ever again. Life is too short to let other people get in your head and mess you up emotionally. Why should I be laden with the baggage heaped on me by other people? Best to let them go and move on.

And that’s what I’ve done. Or at least tried to do.

Understand that I’m very happy in my life right now. I have the freedom that I need to do the things I want to make myself whole, to feel fulfilled. For a very long time, I didn’t have that. There’s so much in life that I wanted to do but was held back by people who either didn’t understand what made me tick or were actively trying to prevent me from achieving my own goals because of their own personal failures or jealousies. While I’m not by any means “rich,” I have enough retirement money socked away to do the things I want to before I get too old to do them. (As I’ve said elsewhere, I named my boat Do It Now for a reason.)

Jupiter Island Beach
Dawn at the beach near here the other day. Today’s sky isn’t quite dramatic, but I’m hoping for more sun when I do today’s walk.

As I type this, I’m sitting on my boat at an anchorage along Florida’s Intracoastal Waterway, feeling it rock in the wind. Later this morning, I’ll take my dinghy ashore, cross the little island there, and take a good, long walk on a deserted beach, picking up shells along the way and feeling the warm wet sand on my bare feet. Sometime before New Year’s Eve, I’ll travel down the ICW past Fort Lauderdale and Miami, and cruise down the Florida Keys to Key West. Along the way, I’ll anchor out and snorkel in aqua blue waters from the swim platform of my boat, along reefs full of coral and tropical fish. I’ll do this on my terms, on my schedule. And if I want or need to change my plans, I’ll do it without pushback from anyone else.

How can I feel anything other than joy?

But lurking behind the daily joy I experience in life is sadness. It comes mostly from the betrayal of someone I loved and trusted and it has been made worse by the knowledge that people in my family don’t understand or care about me. They say that blood is thicker than water, but in my life, most blood is like a poison acid that burns. Casting these people from my life stops the pain they were causing and helps me move on with the life I want, but I retain the sorrow of lost relationships that once meant a lot to me.

Simply said, I can’t let go of my past and memories that haunt me. So here I am.

I related all this to my friend Jason just this morning as I was preparing to write this blog post. Jason is a very smart, thoughtful, and intuitive guy. His response via text was extremely helpful and worth sharing (with his permission, of course):

Part of being alive might be living through pain. As in … while it doesn’t feel good, it may be an essential part of the human experience.

I’ve also heard that pain can be a messenger. And sometimes we learn more about ourselves by sitting with and reflecting on our pain.

I always love this chapter on joy and sorrow from The Prophet. It helps me think of pain in a positive way:

The Prophet Book Cover

I won’t share the whole quote here; you can read it for yourself. But here’s the meat of it (for me):

Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.
And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.
And how else can it be?
The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.
Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter’s oven?
And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?
When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.
When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.
Some of you say, “Joy is greater than sorrow,” and others say, “Nay, sorrow is the greater.”
But I say unto you, they are inseparable.
Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.

– Kahlil Gibran

What does this mean to me? I think it explains why I feel so much joy in my everyday life — it’s because I’ve had so much pain in the past. The pain dug a hole that the joy can fill.

So maybe it isn’t necessary to let things go completely to move forward. Maybe having some pain is necessary to have an equal amount of joy. Maybe I should stop thinking about letting things go and just keep moving forward. I’ve been doing pretty well so far.

How about you? How are you doing? What do you think of all this? Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments on this post so we can all get something from what you have to add.

And, by the way, Joyous Solstice to everyone!