Aggravations of Living Aboard

Things are not always bright and rosy when cruising and living aboard.  There are little things that happen that can make it very aggravating.

We used to live in Stamford, Connecticut.   Last spring, we changed our mailing address to St. Brendan's Isle mail forwarding service in Green Cove Springs, Florida.   We gradually changed our address to Green Cove Springs with our banks, credit card companies, and so on.  Easy, right?  Not so.

There's a craft fair coming up this Saturday here in Brunswick.  Pamela will be there selling her sea glass jewelery (also available online at Beach-Bum-Bling.com).  I've been getting positive feedback on some of my photos from other photographers so I thought I'd try selling them at Pam's booth.  Yesterday, we hied ourselves to Michael's to buy some mat frames.  Honestly, I was shocked that they cost $3.99 apiece.  That's a lot of money for some small pieces of cardboard.  I planned on selling the photos for about $5 each or so.  That would give me a profit of $1.   Oh well.   I bought ten just to get my pics out there to see if anyone would actually pay for them.

Back at the boat, I opened a package.  Huh.  How does this work?  I couldn't figure out how the photo would stay in the little cardboard frame.

There were no directions with the little cardboard frames.  I went to Google, as I usually do when confronted with baffling stuff.  This is how it's supposed to be done.

So what I bought were only the front parts.  No backing panel, no plastic envelope.  $3.99 for 1/3 of what I needed to sell photos for $5 each.  This is starting to make no sense.

Back to Google.  I found a place online that I could order complete packages of frame, backing, and envelope for fifty cents each if I ordered fifty.  Perfect!  It wouldn't be here for this weekend, but it would for the huge Brunswick Stewbilee coming up in November.   I'll be there with the Thunderbird for the car show, and Pam will have a booth at the craft fair.

Then things got sticky.

My $42 order (with shipping) hit the rocks.  My debit card was declined.  I have no idea why since there's plenty of money in there.  I  did it twice, and twice it was declined.  Must be a problem with their system.   Fine.  I'll just use my Paypal account.  That one hit the rocks too.  Paypal wanted to verify my account.  Again.  I guess it's because my billing address on my debit card changed from Stamford to Green Cove Springs.  So I went through their verification process, entering my new billing address and so on.  It then asked for my telephone number so they could call me.  I entered my number.  It was rejected.  They don't call cell phone numbers, only land lines.  Living on a boat, I don't have a land line.

So, the only verification avenue left is snail mail to Green Cove Springs.   That will take weeks.  So I couldn't order my fifty mat frames for a measly fifty cents apiece.

So being an itinerant has its disadvantages.  If you're a human.  It's just ducky if you're a dog.

Dogs don't worry about much of anything.