The Fish Pond: Buoyed

Last week I sold my crib on Craigslist. I was wary about the transaction, because my only previous experience with Craigslist had people offering me less than half of what I was asking for my Pack-N-Play, and I had done my research and knew what I was asking wasn't unreasonable. We really need to get what we can for these baby items that have lived out their useful lives in my house but still have a long life ahead of them. My crib was one of those things, an Italian-made beech crib in neutral finish in which my kids barely spent any time. That's right. They spent most of their sleeping time either in my bed or crashed in a bassinet or on the couch on the main floor of our house. The crib was in fantastic shape, it looked as good as it did when we brought it into the house almost 11 years ago now. I had traded some emails back and forth the week before Christmas and we had agreed to talk after the holidays so she could come see it. I was nervous about my house, because not only did we have the normal mess but we had the mess of all four kids here all day every day for two solid weeks thanks to the blizzard and winter break.

Anyway, to make a long story much much shorter, not only did she show up, but she has five kids of her own, all grown now and ranging in age from 25 to 31 with one set of twins, so the mess didn't scare her, and neither did the kids generally acting like a litter of puppies, jumping all over one another and talking her ear off (turned out that's because she is a recently retired K and 1st grade teacher). She loved the crib, she offered me $25 less than my asking price, but I hadn't remembered asking what I did, and $25 less was what I had wanted for it, anyway; I must have priced it expecting people to negotiate on price. We were able to fit it into her Camry, and either her daughter, who is expecting, or she herself as the expectant grandmother will get many years of good use of that crib. I was very happy to see it go to a good home.

As she was getting in her car to leave, she said to me "You've got very sweet kids. You're doing a good job with them." I thanked her profusely, and I told her how wonderful it was to hear that, because so many days at the end of the day I wonder how it is that I still have hair and haven't pulled it all out because they are making me crazy. She replied "They don't end up that way by accident."