Past Tense

Ok. I'm ready to talk about it for a minute.
What if you had to catch yourself while talking about your life to refer to things in the past tense?
I want to say, "sometimes when the french doors are wide open on a warm summer day, blue scrub jays will walk in looking for some scrub food. They startle when they see me and fly around madly".
When I stop to think about it, I have to say... "scrub jays would come into the house where I lived. On a lovely warm day, they'd feel safe and welcome, apparently. Looking for food or excitement they would brave themselves in. They couldn't bear confinement and pummeled the glass to escape. Used to be, I'd make sure they were freed.
That was when I used to live there.