A 6 Month Update

Hello Dear Readers,

How is everybody? Sorry for being so MIA for the past several months. I would like to say it's because I was off doing something fun, but it's really just the general drudgery of life. I would like to check in more, but I'm so overwhelmed with life I don't really have a lot of time to update the blog. I know the blog is a total mess and part of me wants to restore it, but part of me just thinks it may need to stay in draft form.

I'm still working. Back in July I got hired by the company I was under contract for. It was kind of a surprise since they extended my contract back in March until the end of September, but they offered me a permanent position. I was the only person from my class that was hired (although, out of the 14 people we started with in October of 2018, only three were still working there in July including myself). They did hire some other contract people from other departments. I know that I was there the shortest out of everyone that were hired. It did come with a pay raise so that was nice. Still don't like the job. There's a lot of stress and not a lot of support for it. They don't really give you the tools to do the job well, they just tell you to do it and do it well. Figuring out how is your problem. Despite their worst efforts, I guess I'm doing well. Last month in September (which I found out on October 24th), I was the top rated employee in my department. Out of a possible 10, I got 9.9. I got an email from a much higher up congratulating me, which how I found out. My bosses also sent out an email to everyone on the floor telling them, so I guess it's a pretty big deal. I've been working there for almost a full year and I haven't seen that happen before.

I'm also still working off and on on eBay. I took some time off in July from my full time job and got everything practically filled up, but luckily they don't stay filled. I've been working when I can on keeping things filled, but I am so tired after working a full work week it's hard also having a small business on the side so I don't always work on it. However, I really do need to keep working on it. I have way too much stuff that I need to get rid of. I keep buying things on sale or things to keep parts of and I really need to get it listed. Things just come in faster then they are going out! I have quite a backlog of stuff to list.

I'm not all just buying things for resale, I have added several new dolls to the collection. I've been pretty lucky getting some less common dolls for good prices, but I really need to work on being better. I still have long term plans to go through the vintage collection and scale that back. That's on the back burner while I work on clearing out the dolls I know I don't want, but I have listed a couple vintage dolls recently. Right now I am really thinking about spending a LOT of money on a vintage doll (Like, a *lot* of money), but before I do that I would like to have things more organized around here. I say that, but I most likely won't ever buy that doll. I think about it, but whenever I think about spending that much money I just can't. It's just too much and honestly, I worry about getting ripped off. The doll I want has been faked and I'm afraid that I will get ripped off.

I've also been working on generally getting my life together for my future plans. That stuff is slow since there's a lot to do and I'm doing it all on my own (and there's some ... situations working against me), but I am working on it. I am even working on a creative project that's possibly part of my long term plans. I can't talk much about it, but I'm enjoying working on it. I have a lot of coals in the fire, but not a lot of time or motivation to work on everything. Hopefully I can make process.

That's everything I can think of to update. Can't say you'll hear from me any time soon, but at least you all know what's going on.

~Aubrey

Let's Talk about February

Hello Dear Readers,

February is over and we’re pretty far into March and I figured I should at least try to keep everyone updated. It’s not the most exciting thing in the world, but it does help me. Even if it bores everyone else to tears, it at least gives me a record where I can look back and see what happened in the month.

February started off rough. That first weekend was my Grandfather’s funeral. That was one of the hardest things I’ve had to do. I might have already talked about some of this in the post I shared about his passing, but I don’t want to go back and see if I’m repeating myself. Honestly, I have no intention of reading that post again. I am glad that I could be there for my family, but it was rough. I miss him. I try not to think about it a lot, but sometimes it just hits me. I know the rest of my family is missing him too.

I have been trying to be better about keeping in contact with my Grandmother, but I’ve fallen into my old habits where I’m not calling. I seriously have to force myself to call. It’s just tricky because I have nothing new to talk about, work is boring and I don’t talk dolls with extended family. However, I really need to get back into it. I figure that if I can be a distraction for her that would help take her mind off things even for a little bit.

I have been working a lot this past month. The week after getting back from Connecticut I started putting in overtime. Since then I’ve started doing a little over 51 hours each week. It’s awful and really sucks up all my time, but I need to. I’m saving up for the next step in my life plan and quite honestly, I need the money. It’s going to be rough and it’s certainly not fun, but I need to do it. Right now, I am projecting the second week of August for when I’ll have enough saved up. Hopefully I’m able to keep saving up and won’t have to dip into savings.

I have been doing a lot better on doll related purchases for February. I did buy some dolls at the thrift store when up in Connecticut. I found a TLC Jewel Secrets Whitney and a played with but not too much 2015 Birthday Barbie. I already sold Whitney, her outfit, and the Birthday doll’s body and dress, and more than made my money back. I also bought a cheap Dollar Tree clone doll that was wearing a very nice condition vintage Barbie Registered Nurse outfit. There’s some rust stains on the hat and the zipper needs to be tacked down on one side but it looks really nice. It was so white in the bag I thought it might be the reproduction from a couple years back. I got the hat, dress, and cape. I’m not looking forward to hunting down the little accessories, but it might be nice to have. Still haven’t found a doll to wear it yet.

I was fairly good with doll purchases this month. I bought seven dolls at the thrift (it was Savers where they bag up their dolls in multiples). I sold two, and will be using some of the others for the doll donation project at the end of the year. I also bought the Mary Poppins’ Returns dolls, the standard Mary and Jack. Per usual I am just keeping parts of them. I’m keeping Mary’s shoes and body and Jack’s shoes and hat. Hopefully the parts I don’t want sell and I can get my money back. I also got lucky and bought the Pink Haired Silkstone doll when she came back in stock at Barbie Collector at the end of January. I don’t like paying 75 for a doll not in a formal dress, but I was super smitten with her. I’m planning on reselling her outfit and she’s already been rebodied onto Mary’s body since I hate how delicate the articulated Silkstones are. I wish I could have given her a belly button body but she’s that super pale almost white color and I didn’t have a match. I really like her. I also bought another of the “Blue Chiffon Dress” Silkstone, but only because I needed to spend 100 to use my Barbie Collector coupon. I’m most likely going to sell her off piece by piece to get my money back. I also bought the Barbie Celebration doll for her shoes and sunglasses (I’m a sucker for heart shaped sunglasses). I also way overpaid for a vintage doll. It’s my first vintage doll since December! I was looking for a different doll, found this one online and fell in love. I’m going to be mean and not tell you who she is and keep you in suspense (even though I doubt I’ll ever share her since I can barely do a once the month update). How about this, if I get 3 people commenting on this post asking to see it before I post another post, I’ll do a quick and rough introduction post for the doll.

Despite working so much, I am still working on eBay. I try to do one weekend day each week getting about 8 things done. I have had some decent sales, but with me it’s never enough. My goal for the month of February was to have more single sales than full dolls come in. I was ultimately hoping to make more sales than individual items (Head, body, and clothes), but it was not meant to be. However, I did do my first goal, so that means for my tallies for next month, the first doll doesn’t count!

See everyone in March (Most Likely April!)

A Sad Update

Hello Dear Readers,

My apologies for not blogging lately. I would say that I'm hoping to get back into it, but I just don't think I'll have the time. Back in October I started a full time job and that just takes up all of my time. I do get weekends off, but I've been working really hard on eBay trying to get a handle on the excess stuff I have around here that I want to sell. I haven't been doing much with dolls, but that certainly didn't stop me from buying more. I did keep a running list of how much came in versus how much I sold and the bought side was a lot more than what I got. I will just say I cannot be trusted around Walmart's after clearance Christmas especially when I find out the Harry Potter school uniforms look pretty cute on my Mimi dolls and they had Ginny for 5 dollars. I bought all six they had over the course of two days.

I did think about starting a monthly post where I talk about my top addition to the collection this month, but I can't this month. Despite buying a lot of dolls, I mainly bought them for their shoes, or their bodies, or their clothes. I only bought one doll head to actually join the collection, but he doesn't have a body yet since the one I bought for him, doesn't work. I don't have anything I like better for him so he's been banished to where I keep the other doll heads and who knows if he will ever get a body. I don't even want to admit to myself how long some of those heads have been waiting for bodies.

This post isn't just about me talking about dolls. This month I also lost my Grandfather. He passed away exactly a week ago today. I won't lie, it's been extremely hard for me. He was fine until two weeks ago . He had been having some health related issues in recently year but nothing major but two weeks ago he fell and fractured his arm. He was on the mend and did come home, but a few days later he had a massive heart attack and things went from bad to worse. He hung on for a few days, but started to get worse and on Monday he was gone.

On Friday my family and I went up to Connecticut for the funeral. That was one of the hardest experiences of my life. All of my Aunts and Cousins were there. I'm glad we could all be together at this time, but it was such a sucky situation for why we had to get together. I am very glad we were able to go, but I never want to relive this experience. I barely held it together myself and it's even more heartbreaking seeing everyone you love being in so much pain and not being able to do anything.

My Grandfather is playing the banjo. I never heard him play it, but he still had it.

I am absolutely gutted for my poor Grandmother. We are all rallying around her and she's dealing with it the best she can but my heart is absolutely broken for her. They were married for 68 years since she was 19. I've been working with my mother to think of ways how we can help her. We are at a disadvantage since we are so far away but we are going to work on making more of an effort to call my Grandmother and just keep in touch and we were thinking of things we could send her to help keep her mind off the situation. It's tricky since she's never been a stay at home kind of person, but the things we're thinking of are things to help her at home. She and my Grandfather lived in the same house since 1952, there's a lot of memories that she won't be able to escape from. Right now we're talking about any types of hobbies we can send her supplies for, books we can get her, and movies we can get she would like. 

My Grandparents at their 25th Anniversary. He was not usually so silly in pictures.

It's hard to explain my relationship with my Grandfather. It's been hard to communicate with my Grandfather my entire life since he had massive hearing loss. He had gotten sick as a child and lost a lot of his hearing and as time when on he had some genetic hearing loss. Despite always having a hearing aid, they never found one that was perfect for him. We would talk and when I got older our relationship changed where we did communicate more, he was one if the smartest people I know. He was incredibly mechanically gifted and would come up with amazing solutions to problems. I was talking to my mother about him and I just couldn't come up with words on how to describe him, he was just Grandpa. The best I came up with was he was a consistent, he was just who he was and his presence brought us all comfort. It's hard stating exactly what's changed, but everything has changed.

We weren't able to stay long, and we never went to my Grandmother's house. Part of me wanted to go and get that over with, but part of me just couldn't bear it. It's going to be rough figuring out a new normal. It's going to be rough.

I'm going to miss you Grandpa.