Hi again, James!  This is a continuation of my previous message to you:

JB>  I'm still cutting swaths, categorizing, and boxing stuff
JB>  up to find enough floor space to lay this flooring down.


          Yeah... before you can do xxx, you need to find somewhere to put
yyy. It's like that around our place too... (sigh).



JB>  Remember, I thought it was fun to load up on the pain
JB>  killers, and load up at auctions.


          I can relate.  I had pain & weakness in one shoulder a few
years ago, almost certainly as a result of helping Nora sit up in bed after
her stroke.  I eventually consulted a physio who taught me how to do this
without causing more damage & recommended some exercises.  The family
doctor also put me on naproxen until the pain was more or less under
control & I had regained as much mobility as could reasonably be
expected.  Meanwhile, however, we went to kayaking camp. I was not about to
let a little thing like a bum shoulder interfere with what I wanted to do. 
I took reasonable precautions by not going out for too long at a time &
staying ashore when the wind came up... but I used a lot of aspirin that
weekend.  Later... when I'd stopped using naproxen... I felt as if I was up
the creek without a paddle (bad pun) just as I did when Nora went off
chemotherapy. I reckon it probably wasn't easy for you to stop using drugs
either.

          I also understand how it is when a person has been feeling like
death warmed over & then feels better.  During my initial years as a
teacher I caught one variety of flu or another about every second year.  I
learned that although I felt like a million bucks (by comparison) on the
third day I wasn't yet ready to face the world... and I saw many others
return to work too soon after a bout of flu or pneumonia, then succumb to
complications or whatever.  It seems to me that if you overestimated what
you could do you have plenty of company....  ;-)



JB>  I had little energy by the time I got stuff home to
JB>  sort the wheat from the chaff, so now I need to sort,
JB>  and toss on an industrial scale.


          Uh-huh.  I got rid of a lot of stuff when I was pregnant with
Nora... then I had some intensive parenting to do.  Since her stroke we've
also added a wheelchair & various other pieces of equipment, often on
short notice.  The net result is that I couldn't keep up with the tidying
& tossing for awhile either. Now I have a backlog, just as you have,
and it seems like an overwhelming task. But knowing I'm not alone has
encouraged me to keep picking away at it....  :-)



JB>  Comes to mind, "Find me a buyer."


          Yes, I can see the story from both sides...


     1)  As a buyer I'm glad I don't need any more canning jars.  In New
York & Toronto, I gather, virtually everything is expensive.  It's not
so different in Vancouver.  Apart from the price of real estate... which
increases the overhead
... we get the standard line "Prices slightly higher west of the Rockies."

         Last time Dallas & I were in Alberta, i.e. more than twenty
years ago, BC salmon cost less there than it did in BC.  The reason we were
given was that folks in Alberta don't like salmon as much as we do.  If it
was cheaper here we would probably eat it more often... (sigh).  I've heard
other stories about how cheap various things are in Mexico, Hong Kong,
Thailand, etc.  If you happen to be there anyway you might decide to stock
up... if not, you must also factor in the cost of shipping for yourself
and/or for all these fabulous bargains.  On a camping trip it's not
practical to buy a lot of grocery items which won't keep.


     2)  Regardless of expert opinion, the monetary value of an item is
only as much as somebody is willing to pay for it.  My father's co-worker
seems to have been operating on the assumption that all empty jars are
worthless because *he* didn't need any.  My father realized, from his
description, that identical jars had been selling for hundreds of dollars
each in today's money.  They were rare examples of early Canadiana. 
However...

         I suspect the truth of the matter is somewhere between these
extremes. The average empty jar may be worth next to nothing.  If you have
three dozen of them, all alike, and you know they're old... in my
experience an antique dealer or an auctioneer may be glad to tell you at no
charge whether or not they think it's worth trying to sell these things,
especially if you're also offering some old china and/or furniture you want
to get rid of.  My father's co-worker could have sought advice *before*
chucking the jars out with the trash.  If some item is considered valuable
because of its rarity, it may become a lot less valuable overnight when
more of the same turns up.  I reckon that would be the case with these
jars.  But they'd probably still be worth a few dollars to somebody.  :-)




--- timEd/386 1.10.y2k+