My Brain is too Small

This has nothing to do with the fact that my head is small, because I think it's quite average--though it naturally tilts to the side a bit when I think I'm holding it straight--but it's my brain I'm more worried about.

I'm the first to admit (rant about, pout, whine etc.) about having a busy life. I have a 5 acre piece of land to care for along with goats, chickens, oh, and four kids. I like to cook, I like my house to look tolorably livable and I prefer that my family have clean underwear. I write books and articles, I blog, I fulfull my callings at church. All these things take energy and brain space, and quite frankley there is only so much to go around. I think mine is officially full to brimming. In fact things like blogging, articles, clean underwear and cooking have recently been put into storage in order for me to make room for other stuff. Here's why:

My husband--bless his sleeping-in-today-while-I've-been-up-since-5:00 heart--is a dyed in the wool entrepreneur. Since our marriage he has owned at least a dozen different businesses and he is no respecter of industry. He's owned a telemarketing floor, assisted living facilities, cable reseller, horse racing business, and an eBay software company. He's been quite successful in all these ventures and is right now gearing up to start another one.

However, he's also had concepts that have not come to fruition, such as the idea to open up his own drop shipper for people that sell on eBay. What a drop shipper is, is (I bet I'm not supposed to have two iss together am I?) where someone can sell something on eBay, or yahoo or whatever, and not really own it. They pre-purchase it from a drop shipper but it isn't sent . Then they list it, sell it, and notify the drop shipper who then mails it for them. In essence the drop shipper is the consumate middle man. So my hubby had this idea in summer 2006 and in true Kilpack style he jumped in with both feet, ordering tons of stuff he could get through liquidation companies. These items began rolling in while he was developing the website, and then he decided to go another direction and he sold the company. The guy that bought it was going to continue this drop shipper thing, but he didn't. So all these items sat, and sat, and sat. Finally, my husband rented the office the items were being stored in and so he moved them to a storage unit at which point his terribly brilliant and martyish wife (that's me) asked him why he was storing all this stuff and why he didn't sell it on eBay?

"Great idea," he says. "Have fun."

Wait? What just happened here?

And so, here I am selling on eBay and paying daily homage to Julie Wright who works full time for eBay, runs a store, raises 3 kids, writes books, AND sells on eBay. I am not Julie Wright and all this stuff has given me a headache--the kind of headache where you wait at any moment for aliens to punch a hole through your skull in order to get out of there.

I've sold 30+ items and have 15 or so auctions going right now. I've had to learn about shipping rates (I got thoroughly taken on my first few auctions) I'm buying boxes and can tell you what a zone 6 means through the post office (in a nutshell it means that even though an item weighs not-so-much, the box size is so big that you pay double on shipping) I've had two auctions canceled because the buyers were hackers that hacked into someone else's account, I've given one full refund because the item (a $100 computer monitor) was damaged when it arrived. I am making daily treks to the post office and UPS and I can't sleep at night because I listed some iPod Nanos as new and then found out they were refurbished. I'm certain someone is going to send a mail bomb to my house for lying to them.

I know that most people could handle this, and it makes me very angry that I feel so overwhelmed, but I dream of things like sending the wrong item to the wrong person or having someone tell me that their child died of anaphalactic shock because a cat hair got into their box.

The good news is that I've made about $1000 so far and since these items were purchased so long ago, I have no idea how much was paid for them so I am more concerned with getting stuff out of my poor office (see photo) than I am about making my money back.

So, anyhoo, that's what's going on with me. I am hoping my brain waves will even out here soon and I won't feel quite so overwhelmed. As for now, you can find me on eBay. My tag name is Ismylee and if you're looking for a wristwatch style blood pressure kit, or an 8gb no name MP3 player--I'm your seller!