Since hitting age 40 a few years ago, my vision has gone on a downward spiral. It is almost as depressing as the sensible shoe recommendation that I always seem to be bitching about on this blog.  I had not been to the eye doctor in two years so I went this week and he said that while my reading vision is a little worse, my distance vision is the same.  He blamed part of my issue on my severe dry eyes. I did not know that I had dry eyes, much less severely dry  eyes so this was better news than I expected.

Here is a shot taken from the beach on Friday morning during my bike ride.  Look at how flat the Atlantic Ocean is.  It is barely ever that flat and truly looks like a lake.  It is even more peaceful than watching it when the waves are rolling in. You would be amazed at how many people were hanging out in it on an early weekday morning.

On the flip side, the lack of any ocean breeze is making it crazy hot here. I did not cool down from the bike ride all day.   When I got into my car at 9:30 a.m., the temperature gauge said 99 degrees. On September 13th!  That is Florida in the fall!  I prefer hot over cold any time but a little bit of autumn might be nice.

I've been spending more time than ever in my car, carpooling my sons around.  It is killing me.  On top of that, it is time for a new car and my sweet husband dragged me to the car dealership one night during the week.  I'd rather go to the dentist.   We still are not sure what we want so after hanging out there for hours, I drove home is my own car! 

 I'd like this...

but I'm not getting a Porsche.

Because a Porsche is not in the cards for me right now (I have two kids who will both, g-d willing, be in college in the next 5 years!),  I'm trying to convince my husband to get me this...

Yes, it's a prius. 50 miles to the gallon. Earth-friendly.   I really think it is what I want. I've been driving an SUV for the past 15 + years and I feel like a bus driver at this point. I'm sick of the horrible gas mileage that you get in carpool lines and stop-and-go traffic.  A small, easy car that you have to fill up once in a while sounds so relaxing.

We'll see what I end up with. Probably something in between.

This week ended with the holiest Jewish day of the year, Yom Kippur. Yom Kippur is the end of the Jewish New Year. It is the day that most Jews fast to ask forgiveness for their past sins.  

The holiday started on Friday night where we at a giant meal. Then you are supposed to fast for 24 hours. (my men fast, I never do) . We then headed back over to the grandparent's house for another giant meal. There is a lot of eating involved when you are Jewish.  I feel gigantic today and need to seriously take it easy this week.

To all of my blogging readers , whatever religion that you practice, I wish you peace and joy during the next 12 months (even the many, many of you that visit but don't ever comment!)

May I brag for a moment...

When we bought our house over 15 years ago, the front door only had one regular old lock.  We live in  Miami. It's not New York City  but one lock does not seem like enough. We had a locksmith come out and put a medco lock on as a second lock. Medco keys cannot be duplicated without an id and you have to be the person who applied for the lock. In other words, your housekeeper can't make a copy of it.   

On Tuesday morning, the key broke in the lock.  It was my idea to use chewing gum and a coat hanger to try to retrieve it but luckily my husband put the kabash on that.   We contacted a locksmith. Because we have a fancy-schmancy Medco lock, the cost could be up to $300.

We googled "how to get a broken key out of a lock" and a tough guy type explained how to do it using a little wire "broken key retriever" tool.  Our locksmith does not sell them. Neither do the hardware stores.  Luckily Amazon did so we decided to risk the $17.50  it would cost to buy and ship the tools overnight to us (This was $17.50 total with shipping). They came the very next day (gotta love Amazon!) and they loooked like a lock picking kit or something.  No directions or anything.

My amazing, wonderful, handy husband was able to retrieve the key using the tool and some wd-40.  Woo Hoo$ 283.00 saved! Shoe money!  

Here is the dead key!

Isn't my spouse fabulous? Aren't I the smartest girl EVER to marry such a home-improvement stud? 

An eBay Post....

I've been a powerseller on eBay for over 10 years. Even when my babies were small and when I had my three retail businesses, I always kept a little eBay going on.   Right now, I am in full force I have over 500 listings a month and two seller ids.   People always ask me questions about my eBaying so here are a few of the most asked questions and answers...




Isn't it a lot of work to sell on eBay?

Well, yes and no. Many of my consignment clients try it themselves (who can blame them as they get to keep all of the money and not split it with me) but it is sort of like painting your own house or fixing your own car. If it is small job, it is probably worth saving a few bucks but big jobs should often be left to professionals.

Between my two eBay ids, I have over 7000 positive feedbacks. I have regular customers. I don't have the selling limits that eBayers with low feedback have. Due to my long-standing good record, not only do I have listing and selling down to a science, I consistently get the highest prices for my items. (I check this quite often)

If you have a thing or two to sell, it is very easy to snap a photo and list. If it sells, then you need to ship it out right away!  If you have a carload (as many of my clients have) , it is best left to the professional (me)


Why do you have two selling ids?

I started the second id to sell my own stuff when I started the consignment business but now, I just have two because one has an eBay "store" and the other does not. Ebay often rewards its store owners by NOT inviting them to amazing free listing sales. This seems counter-intuitive but in the eBay world, fair  does not always exist. For example, I pay over $50 a month for my eBay store (in addition to listing and sales fees). The the other non-store id gets 50 free listings a month but they often run a sale allowing free listings. This month there was one and I went crazy with free listings and sold A LOT.

What program to you use to list and keep track?

I use GarageSale for Mac. It took some getting used to but was a one time fee and hosts all of my listings and photos and it is really easy to relist from there. I use ebay's own application called Outright to keep track of expenses for tax purposes.

Taxes? 
Yes, if you sell over a certain amount in a year, you get a nice tax form to file with the IRS. Keep this in mind if you decide to run an online garage sale or something.

Do you have any other questions, I'd love to make eBay a recurring theme on my blog!

Here are my sites.

The store one: SouthBeachChic
The non-store one: CasaChic

It's the beginning of the end???

During our  much needed walk along Hollywood Beach this morning, my husband and I stumbled upon the newly destroyed park and parking lot which was bulldozed to make Margaritaville. This is not going to be your usual Margaritaville restaurant. It is a Margaritaville resort where parrotheads from around the world can live the Jimmy Buffet lifestyle while on vacation.

There was a poster up showing what the 349-room resort was going to look like in 18-24 months when it is completed. 

Even though my husband and I are not "parrotheads", we stood at the rendition and wished it was open already for a check in. We could use a few days of  margaritas and island music. While I was daydreaming about the thought of lounging by the pool while my kids played on the hotels planned flowriders, two cranky locals came up to us and said "It's the beginning of the end".


You see, Hollywood Beach is one of the last commercial beach areas in South Florida that has not been upgraded. Many of the beachy places, most famously, South Beach, had developers move in and buy up properties and upgrade them.  This led to many small places being kicked out, mostly due to higher rents. It also led to world class hotels and restaurants being opened in our back door. Amazing shops and big festivals such at Art Basel came to Miami Beach.

The Beach in Hollywood is absolutely gorgeous. The little mom and pop souvenir stands and cafes look like cheap-y beach. Hey, I never complain about the delicious breakfast with the million dollar view that my husband and I often partake in for less than ten bucks at a tiny little cafe. However, the hotels and apartments along the beach look down-right dingy. If they were not on the beach, you would expect crack moms to be hanging out in them.  Bringing a beautiful resort to the area makes such sense. 

To the two old cranks who interrupted my daydream about being wasted away again in Margaritaville, please keep your negativity to yourselves. The place is going to create jobs and re-vitalize the place. Plus, cheeseburgers taste better in paradise! 

I liked it twice!!!

I've blogged about this before but seriously, this is my favorite thing (besides ebay of course)

It is called Like Twice


You just sign up and request a bag. You fill up the bag with your gently used clothes and they paypal you money or give you a store credit to shop in their store!

I've done this three times already with my clothes that just did not sell on ebay due to their lineage. This stuff was from GAP, J.CREW, Bloomingdales, etc.  This type of stuff does not have a huge sell through rate on ebay so I was happy to get anything for the stuff. (The next stop was goodwill).


I just sent in a few things again and my paypal account is $50 richer.

I've made over $200 in the past few months doing this so
it is a good reason to clean out your closet.

Here is the link if you are interested
liketwice.com/1peVp

Back to School....

School started down here on Monday.  Yes, it is the middle of August. Yes, it is a million degrees out in Miami and kids should be in the pool, not school. Too bad, so sad, it is a fact of life here that they start school so darn early.

Sadder still is the fact that the geniuses of the world decided that 7:20 a.m. is a great time to see the bright cheery faces of high schoolers. The people who need more sleep than anyone other than infants start school when the sun is rising. Our bus comes between 6:15 and 6:30 a.m. I really think that life would be cheerier for all those involved if they started school around 9:30 or 10 a.m.

Luckily, everyone had a great first day and it looks like it will be a great year! 179 days left until summer!

My Beautiful Laundrette...

My Beautiful Laundrette is the title of an artsy film from the 80's.  The last time that I recall being at a laundromat was sometime in the 80's.   Today, I took all 100 pounds of the camp trunks to a laundromat.  It was not beautiful or artsy.

I left my house at 6:20 a.m. I was awake anyway and if I remembered correctly, laundromats are not air-conditioned, even in steamy Florida.

As I pulled into the open-air place in a decent-ish neighborhood,  I was immediately accosted by a strung out old lady asking if I wanted to buy a plastic flower.  I told her that I needed all my quarters for the laundry. As it turns out, this was not a lie.


I dragged in the four camp trunks and a bottle of this. Tide should re-name it Tide anti-stinky.

The laundromat was open 24 hours and there was no attendant. There were three men doing laundry and they all looked like pedophiles to me but pretty much ignored me. Perhaps it was because it looked like I was dragging four body bags into the place. It was an open air place and right on a major street (US 1) so I not really nervous. Had there been an attendant, I would have seen if I could just drop off and pay to have her do it , but no such luck.

There were five huge washing machines. I started to load up all of the smelly stuff into them when I noticed that it was $5.00 a load! Whoa!!! The last time I did coin laundry, my roommate and I split a roll of quarters and still had enough left over for a game of quarters. I did not have enough cash to complete the whole job!

The laundromat did not have an ATM so I huffed it across the street to Dunkin Donuts. The nice ladies there advised that they had plenty of white sugar demons but no ATM and I'd have to head a block away to the McDonald for more cash!

As I walked down US 1, I truly hoped that no one I knew saw me. I'm sure it appeared that I was looking to buy drugs.  Luckily McDonalds had an ATM and I withdrew cash and headed back to my beautiful launderette named Swifty

As the sun came up, I not only filled up five jumbo washing machines but two extra large ones for a total of 7. Here's the view from my folding table. I was wondering why no one else grabbed this spot but the sun started to blind me as it rose.

Then came the fun part, the drying.  The machines at Swifty take one quarter at a time. This buys you about five minutes.   I loaded up ten of the dryers and then had to stand them and keep putting in quarters as each one stopped.   I think that the other patrons there at that early morning were giving me the stink eye for taking up so many dryers.  Is there some type of laundromat etiquette? I hope not but I doubt that I'm ever going back so I really don't care. I wanted to get this dirty job over with as fast as possible.

At 7:30, a helper got dropped off by his father after a bribe of a dunkin donut and a little cash was accepted. He helped by putting quarter after quarter in the dryers that I was hogging and with the heavy lifting of the ikea bags of clean laundry into my car. You know that I love my ikea bags!

By 8:30 a.m., all of the camp clothes and trunks were washed, dryed, folded and on the way home.  

While the laundromat was a little bit creepy, this was a brilliant idea. I would have been doing the stinky laundry at home for days and days.  

By the way, I always use fragrance free detergent. My favorite is All Clear, however, the Tide Sport with Febreeze was a rock star for this tough job.  I can't believe how clean and fragrant the clothing is. I'd highly recommend it for a dirty job.  (This is an un-paid, un-solicited opinion/review)