Craigslist Transactions are Shady by Nature (Not Cause I Hate Ya)

I have tons of sh** to sell.  Coming off of many years of being a spendthrift (I'm newly inititated into the "Do I REALLY need that?" mentality), I have amassed a certain, well, prodigious collection of purses and other girlish accoutrements that really needs to be whittled down. 

I do not particularly enjoy the usage of ebay if I can sell things more locally.  Ebay requires packing items for shipment, convincing the post office that sending perfume via ground is legal according to their website, and giving Ebay a cut of the profit which itself requires money and time and drives to the post office.  To that I say, NOPE.  Instead, I enjoy when I meet someone around the corner at the bagel shop and sell them $300 worth of old jewelry.  Thus began my relationship with Craigslist.

Craigslist has been fine for me over the years while apartment hunting and giving things away for free, so I figured, let's give it a shot with all this stuff I need to sell.  Most of the people that contact me have been thus far average and not scary, so I would say that Craigslist is still being good to me.  That said, here are some of the gems I have come across (none of these are spam) in attempting to sell via Craigslist:


In seeing a purse in person:

DH:  "Here you go, it's the Calvin Klein."
Customer:  "You said this was silver in the ad.  It's really more of a grey with a shimmer and some metallic inflection."
DH:  "So, in other words, silver."
Customer:  (15 minutes later)  "Yeah, I really am looking for something darker silver than this."


In negotiating price:

DH:  "Great!  So that'll be $200 as we discussed.  That is 50% off retail value."
Customer:  "Will you take $75 for it?"
DH:  [Inhaling deeply with eyes closed] "No.  We already discussed price via email, didn't we?  We came to an agreement?"
Customer:  "Yeah, I'm really only looking to pay $75."
DH:  [Shoving back chair and standing up] "Thanks for letting me know now instead of before.  Buh-bye!"


In picking a meeting spot:

DH:  "Let's meet at the bagel shop in the town center."
Customer:  "Let's meet in the rear of the Whole Foods parking lot in the center."
DH:  "There's no Whole Foods in my town."


In providing too much information as to why a particular item is desired for purchase:

DH:  "The shoes are size 11."  (What?  I have big feet.)
Customer:  "Great!  Would you be willing to sell to a man with a shoe fetish?"
DH:  "TMI, bro!  If you'd just said, 'I want to buy them,' we wouldn't have had a problem!"


Upon discovering via Google that the customer has a criminal record:

DH:  "Holy ****** ****!  WHAT IS WITH PEOPLE????"
Fatty:  "MRROOOW!"

Craigslist, I do love you most of the time, but I needed to get this off my chest.  Please help me find some more real customers and less freaky deaks.  Oh, and darling readers, if you're in need of any new purses, perfumes, or jewelry, please do get in touch!  I have many for sale.

Mon Jardin des Plantes

Friends, don't be jealous!  I have a container garden (raising the roof - you can't see me, but I'm doing it).  That's right, this is the kind of crap Desperate Housedaughters get excited about when they don't have things like jobs and boyfriends. 

Please voila my gorgeous lettuce container:

Also, please enjoy one of the members of my herb garden:

Mr. Mint has been repotted to a much larger container since this picture was taken, and let me tell you, it is satisfying to have a little jardin des plantes on my deck.  Iranians eat herbs by the handful (as opposed to delicately sprinkling them over meats and veggies like white people), so it'll be great to grow piles and piles of mint and basil for us to eat. 

Container gardening is kind of cool, even posh!  I like the idea that it's not in my yard where I'd have to do things like weed the garden and fend off bunnies (one of my friends has a gorgeous outdoor garden and tells me all kinds of tales about squirrel/tomato robberies), and I also like that sweet Fatty can go luxuriate her fat self underneath the shade of the Heliotrope. 

I will say, though, that the number of strange and somewhat unattractive insects I've encountered on the deck throughout the potting of said garden is ICKY.  I will spare you photographs, but suffice it to say that adult jumping spiders are approximately tarantulas that are the size of a quarter.  And about an inch tall.  YEAH.

Do you all keep container gardens?  If so, what do you grow?  I need an excuse to go to Home Depot and buy more potting soil so the cutie dude there can carry it out to my car for me.

Dinner Expectations

Dinner.  It's what's for dinner.  Wait, what?

Cooking dinner is part of the housedaughter equation of expectation which looks something like this:  Desperate Housedaughter + free time + no job + vague household skills = dinner.  Each and every night, I receive two phone calls, usually in this order:

4:30 PM - Dad calls.  "Housedaughter, what's for dinner tonight?  I'm on my way home on the train."

Me:  "Dad, WTF?  I'm so sick of getting these calls about dinner!  I can't make dinner every single night!  I already do all the laundry, 75% of the dishes, [blah blah prattling and whining about all the housework], so I don't feel compelled to make dinner, AGAIN!"

Dad:  "Fine I'll eat bread for dinner."

Me:  "FINE!"


5:30 PM - Mom calls:  "Housedaughter, what's for dinner?"

Me:  [Turning red with rage] "PFFFTTTTTT WHAT?"

Mom:  "What.  Is.  For.  Dinner?"  (She's adorable and thinks I didn't hear her.  I love optimists!)

Me:  "Thanks, I heard you.  Tacos.  From last night."

Mom:  "Ok, I'll just eat a muffin from the grocery store."


Oh dear.  I try hard to avoid the carb-loaded dinner fate for my parents, but let's be clear - I hate cooking.  Baking is fun and enjoyable, but cooking, NOOOOO!  I don't find anything about it fun.  So when dinner is laid squarely on my shoulders all the time, I get exhausted.

In the last 7 days, I've made dinner a shocking 3 times!  BBQ burger/veggie extravaganza, tacos, and spaghetti and meatballs (well, I only made the meatballs).  When my Dad makes dinner just once every 3 months, he gets mad if we ask him to make dinner again during that time.  And I laugh at him copiously.  What gives, people? 

It's good to be a housedaughter in a way, because now I know (unless I married some super rich dude who regularly bought me Prada and we had a prenup) that I could never be a housewife.  The expectation of dinner is just too much for me.  It tosses me over the edge.  Alas, I must now take my leave of you to go make my breakfast oatmeal.  Let me confess that cooking breakfast is an exception to my cooking hatred.  I make a delicious breakfast, so come on by anytime before 10 AM!  But please don't ask me to make you dinner.  Ever.

Repairmen

My parents freely make appointments with repairmen and expect me to be home during the long windows of time in which they'll potentially arrive.  Apparently, as a housedaughter, it's part of my job description.  [Sidebar: I'm still waiting on the official job description...hmmm maybe Fatty is HR.  I should ask her.]  Today, for example, the AC repairman will be arriving somewhere between 12-6.  Let's talk about this. 

12-6????  Can you imagine if my mom made an appointment with her patients and said, be here from 12-3, and I'll see you somewhere in there.  YEAH NO.  I get it, I get it, she's in an office, blah blah no travel time, blah blah crap.  But a 6 hour window?  The repairmen of the world are getting a little too comfortable with us being comfortable with their time window system.

I think a 2 hour window is fine.  3 hours, pushing it.  Above that?  You should bring me lunch, a soda, and guarantee an attractive and age-appropriate repairman with every repair.  I know Hillary Clinton told us that it takes a village to raise a child, and I often find that she is right, except that it takes a village to maintain a damn house.  If I weren't home for these appointments, my parents would have to wait months to have the AC repairman come, and by then mice could eat through the wires again (that's what happened last time).

I think next time I make an appointment somewhere, I'll try to make it in a window of time and see how well that goes.  Hi, friend I'm meeting for lunch?  I think I'll arrive somewhere between 8 AM and 9:30 PM.  Let me know if that works for you.  Toodles!