I swear my life would make the best reality show. A house full of eccentric elderly people. Pets who act like children. A Red-Headed Hellion with children who would frighten The Children of the Corn. I’m the one in the middle of all the chaos.

I’ve been trying to simplify my life. However, the older of the two little girls has some learning issues. I’m going to be helping with homeschool. I already babysit quite a bit, rush to town to help with emotional bedtimes, etc. For a year, my daughter lived in a trailer she’d bought and put in the pasture beside our house. It was to be a temporary housing solution. We hoped the house across the road would come available and be reasonable priced, but when that didn’t happen fast enough, I found a very nice, cute little house that needed a few renovations in town, five minutes away. Problem solved, or so I thought.

A week after her family moved in, the house across the road was offered to us, along with 8 acres of land. No more driving to get where I’m needed. No more worrying about the hellions escaping the front door and running into the street (the two-year old moves step stools to reach the upper latch of the front door). But the house was built in the early 80’s and was occupied by an old lady who lived alone until her family moved her into a nursing home. We pretty much have to plan to gut the bathrooms and redo them, replace the roof, the carpet, the tile…

So, I’m buying that house, along with everything still inside it, selling the other, and this weekend we are holding a massive garage sale to get rid of all the items the woman horded in her house for thirty years.

We have found some treasures. I scarfed up two lovely old blue carnival glass bowls. My daughter found a Beatle record in mint condition. My mother, aunt and grandmother swarmed the crocheted afghans and a multitude of coats and jackets the woman barely wore.

Yesterday, my grinning son-in-law walked in to present me with a Teen Wolf doll whose eyes glow red and growls when you flip the switch.

The sale starts early tomorrow morning, so be thinking about me, setting up tables to pile with clothing, toys, dishes, crocheted toilet tissue covers, a dozen bibles, statues with Jesus standing at the bottom of the sea beside a conch shell, dressers crammed with linens, picture frames with photos of smiling people who are no longer living and whose relatives didn’t care enough to save.

My daughter has a box for the photos she’s sure some long-lost grandchild might someday return to find. She’ll keep it along with the dead husband’s Mason uniform and her Mason wife’s pin. Maybe when the old woman finally passes, she’ll return and be happy about the fact we saved something she treasured. While we renovate, we’ll respect.

But she’s not getting the Teen Wolf doll back.