By Joe Janes

When Life Gives You Lemons, Eat Them!***

Blog Post from Craig Masters’ blog Masters Class with Craig Masters

By Craig Masters, author of the eBook Masters-ing Life!

Spring has flung! Flowers are grooming. Trees are sprouting squirrels. Birds are singing and eating earworms. It’s time for renewal! It’s a popular time of year for people to move. That’s the situation I’m in, since getting locked out of the storage unit that I was legally renting Thanks, Albany County Sheriff! Don’t worry, my P.O. Box remains the same (Craig Masters, Inc., P.O. Box R-3507, Stinke, Ohio — Ask me about my cryptocurrency called Craig Coins! Theoretically, I’m a millionaire!)

The Craig Masters’s way of looking at moving is it’s an opportunity to purge! Free oneself! Time to get rid of the many things I have been lugging around that no longer bring me joy. UR-Stuff Storage Units has given me two hours to move my stuff from the curb before they hire someone to haul it off to the junkyard. I wish I had a truck. They could hire me! The good news is that I don’t need a full two hours. The bad news for them, they’ll still need to hire someone because I’m not taking all of it! Those plastic filing bins filled with old bills, rubber bands, and binder clips are going to make some raccoon family very happy. 

There are things I automatically know I will not need to take with me to the single room weekly rental at Frank’s Hotel for Gents. No need to pack the poop bucket. They have a pooping toilet down the hall. I’ll keep the hot plate and mini-fridge because they are my property. A man needs to have a sense of ownership in this world. I bought the hot plate and found the mini-fridge in the alley. Still works, too, even though the smell would make you think otherwise. 

In the late ‘90s, I bought four metal folding chairs at Target for $10 each. Two of them still work and they’ll be coming with me. So are the other broken two. I’ll use them for spare parts.  It’s important to be able to sit on something other than the floor. The air mattress has seen better days and, in spite of my consistent patchwork with duct tape, still ends up completely deflated by morning. It can go. I can use some boxes to make a bed until more eBook royalties roll in from Amazon (Don’t forget to give me a good rating!). A big thank you to those who read Craig Masters’ Masters-ing Life! Thank you for continuing to read this blog, too. I almost have enough entries for a new book! Look for Craig Masters’s Life is Like a Shopping Cart — Roll With It! 

Life is like a shopping cart! Squeaky wheels, like ex-wives, happen, but you can’t let them stop you from reaching for the good cereal. The kind that comes in a big bag and tastes just like real Lucky Charms. It’s magically less expensive! 

I don’t think I’m going to take these old broken book shelves. They won’t fit into the shopping cart I “borrowed” from the grocery store. I will keep the shopping cart. It’s handy! It will make a nice place to keep my clothes and inspire me to finish my new eBook.

I have plenty of doo-dads, knickknacks, paddy whacks, dog bones, and gee-gnaws. I will keep them all. These things are important, because they can bring a smile to your day, like this chipped ceramic mug with a faded picture of a kitten holding onto a tree branch, probably just before falling to its death. It reminds me that life is short and to enjoy nature. 

Shout out to Bernard Duhempel from Boise for taking the time to send me a letter thanking me for my marriage advice. As someone who has been married four times and divorced five, I have a lot to say about making a long-term relationship work. 

Well, that’s about all the stuff I’m going to take. 

A Craig Masters’s Big TIP-per:

Plastic table cloths also make a durable blanket and shower curtain. 

Time for a fresh start in my new place that I’m not able to move into until tomorrow. Right now, I’ll head to the public library to post this entry and hang out until closing. Tonight, I will be like that kitten and enjoy nature sitting under the stars at the park near the scummy pond with the funky odor. I’ll wrap myself up in my plastic table cloth and sip some gas station wine out of that kitten cup to celebrate this exciting new chapter in my life and to keep warm. It’s supposed to be down in the 40s.