live long and prosper

I still think of it as "Mom's car". The car I've had since 2014, when my parents gifted it to me. This was probably a couple of years after Mom should not have been driving, but whatcha gonna do? By then, Mom's remaining days on earth were few, she'd finally given in.

 So I'd had Mom's 2000 Toyota for the last 10 years, and now it was time to rehome it.

I figured I'd sell it myself as the dealership where we just got our new funmobile likely wouldn't offer much in trade. I looked on Marketplace for comparable offerings, but really found none. Oh, there were plenty of old cars, all with around 200,000 miles. My car was old, but had less than 31,000. Nothing to compare it to!

So I winged it. I took a few glamour shots of her in the driveway, sure to include a real odometer reading, and put her out there.

As happens, there are weirdos out there. I figured I could weed out the scammers well enough. But the post went absolutely bananas. I'd done an online Carmax quote, then set my price at a few hundred dollars more. Cash only.

I've lost count of the number of inquiries I fielded in just the first hour. A few I knew were NOT scammers because they countered with shamefully low amounts. They were easy to slough off. Others were more persistent. 

One guy in particular sent me a photo of a grid of 100-dollar-bills laid out (on a bed?) - totalling the full amount I was asking. 

Sheesh, I thought. I wonder if this is what internet dating is like. D*ck pic analogy, anyone?

Finally, I marked it as "sale pending", just to slow the flow of inquiries. See, I wanted to screen potential buyers a bit. Many of them looked to be flippers who would just turn around and try to sell it for more. And that's FINE - in fact that's the Carmax business model - but I wanted to hold out for the just right. I took a moment and asked the universe (and Mom) for guidance. 

By late afternoon, I was ready to remove the listing and screw it, take it to Carmax. Just as I had that thought, my messenger pinged. It was one of the earlier, more promising inquiries. Here he was offering a few  hundred over what I was asking. 

Mom's little-old-lady car started an online bidding war?

In my exhaustion, I messaged back. "I just got home from work, I can meet anytime if you want to come look"

And he was on like Donkey Kong.

He lived about an hour away, and was out hiking just then. He said he'd head over once he got back to his car at the trailhead, make a quick stop at the ATM, and gather up all his cash.

And that's how the weird car sale day ended. We met him and his girlfriend (who lent him the last few hundred) at a nearby parking lot. They showed up in their hiking gear and bought Mom's car - about 10 hours after I'd posted it. He said he has a lifted SUV, great for the mountains, but has been struggling to find a good used economy beater car for getting around town.

Sold. 

Mr. hundred-dollar-bills pic expressed his sadness. It wasn't in the stars for him this time.

Right, Mom?

getting trashy

The moving activities continue.  On the bright side, I've managed to sell more items to nice people.  Honestly, I'm not making a boat load of money off any of these clearance deals.  Everything is priced to sell quickly, and it's working.  It's just enough to hopefully keep the weirdos from showing up... knock on wood.

In addition to Marie Kondo-ing our possessions, I've been packing up those things we don't currently need use of.  This has forced me to go through stuff the kids left behind when they each flew the coop.  OMG!

See, the bulk of my tidying up to this point has involved my and Magnum's stuff.  I figured there were "a few things" the kids left behind, but I hadn't really done a deep dive until now.  JEEZ-us, I'm finding things from elementary school, etc.  In some ways, it's been a nice little walk down memory lane, but then I catch myself - "Why am I reading a 4th grade book report!?"

I called our trash service and asked for an extra bin for this month, but they said they only rent bins by the quarter.  They can charge me a dollar a bag over our weekly limit, which seems reasonable.  Seems to me, though, that having an extra bin to put the bags in would be easier for them, but rules is rules.

I did actually begin this process a couple of years ago when I painted the kids' bedroom. Yes, there was a time when all three of them shared a large room, under the guise of, "Let's play barracks!"  I took a bunch of stuff off the shelves and stashed them in a large box.  The large box remains.

At this point, I'm kind of afraid to open it.

Got any packing/ moving tips?  Anyone?

kicking the bucket(s) for chickens

We've ramped up our minimalist efforts as we've gotten more serious on the "we're moving" plan.  I thought I'd done a pretty good job of Marie Kondo-ing our place, but it was just the tip of the iceberg.  Sh*t's gotten real, and I see we have more to do.

I may have mentioned that when the kids were little, we were sort of preppers.  True preppers keep enough provisions on hand for a year, but we were never true preppers - mainly out of laziness.  But we still had quite a stash of food and water and such.  We've pared that down greatly over the last several months - ate or donated everything, and then I sold all our storage shelves.

I had thrown myself into denial forgotten about the buckets o' prepper food in our crawl space along with about 120 gallons of water stash.  But I went into the crawl space last week and found they hadn't gone away on their own.

First on my list was to use up all that water.  I'll just say that even just two people can go through about 120 gallons of water pretty quickly if they use it to flush their toilets.  Done!

We'll keep two 7-gal jugs, and I sold all the rest.

But the food.  Who would possibly want several buckets of unground wheat and corn?  Furthermore, why did Magnum buy all this unground wheat and corn??  Honestly, when it would appear on our doorstep, the kids and I just said, "welp, that's his thing", we had bigger fish to fry.  But I had no intention of grinding wheat berries into flour to bake bread or anything else.

We also have a good stash of rice and beans, but that I can actually use.  Not in the abundance we have, but the Rescue Mission will happily take the extra.

So I put the wheat berries buckets on facebook marketplace, not expecting much.  Then I met Chicken Lady.

Naturally, that's not her real name, but I will always think of her in that sense.  She was so happy to haul our buckets of wheat away for her chickens at my clearance sale price.  We mentioned the corn to her, but she sadly didn't have a way to mill the corn.

Duh, I actually had a grain mill for sale too (purchased by Magnum for the wheat I wasn't going to grind), but forgot.  Chicken lady saw the grain mill the next day and texted that she wanted it, adding "still got that corn?!"

So I'm happy, Chicken Lady's happy, and I'm thinking the chickens are happy too.

selling, scammers, and the healing powers of mud

Yeesh, these are supposed to be the lazy days of summer, and I've been busy neglecting the poor blog!

My tutor workload has nicely mellowed - a few nice students a week, no evenings, no weekends. 😊
But I am filling the days with other things.  Since our April (snow) showers brought May (snow) showers brought a buncha downed tree limbs brought June showers, I find myself doing a fair amount of yard work this summer, trying to keep the yard presentable.

In my continuing tidying efforts, I've been selling a few items off on craigslist.  I get a kick out of the scammers out there.  They don't fail me.  Within minutes of placing an ad on craigslist, I get inquiry texts from interested "buyers".  So here's your PSA for today:

•   If some stranger asks for a Google Voice Verification code to prove to THEM that YOU are not a scammer, THEY are a scammer.

I can usually spot them right off because they respond to ads shortly after the ads have been posted, the item for sale is usually named exactly as posted in the ad, and the English is not so good.  I like to humor them a bit before I block them.  Example, figure 1.

fig. 1

*sigh*  Eventually, they leave me alone, and the legit people come through.  

And craigslist hasn't been a one-way street this month.  Meego, still reeling a bit from his broken heart, has done some shopping therapy and found a sweet new-to-him, full suspension mountain bike, plu$ a few acce$$orie$ and shop adju$tment$.   Good thing he works a lot of hours in the summer.  He got it out to the hills last weekend, and this showed up in my instagram.

Well, y'know what they say, "best way to get over a man is to get under another one"

OOPS, wait.  Wrong scenario.  

I meant to say,  "best way to get over a girl is to get off  Snapchat and get on a new bicycle".

sale?

Couple of months ago, I bought some new shooz (yeah, I know, stop the presses).  They're running shoes, and I ordered them online.

So they arrived and felt a bit tight, but not too.  I hopped around inside the house and deemed them good.  Then I ran around outside, and that changed my mind.  I really should go up a half size.

I got a second larger pair and we've been enjoying a  happy existence ever since.  But... what about that first pair?  I couldn't return them because I'd stupidly hastily run around outside in them.  Other than being too small for ME, they were perfectly fine shoes, only worn that one time.

I could donate them, but I was thinking (1) they're practically brand new, (2) they're not a common brand for people who don't run, and (3) I just doled out some good cash for these things.  Maybe I could sell 'em?  Maybe some other runner lady, with feet slightly smaller than mine, would recognize the brand and realize the bargain!

I jumped into action.

Guess the shooz!
(photo not my feet/shooz/legs)

Off to craigslist I went, with a few pretty pictures and a bit of the story - only worn once, wonderful, just too small for me, blah, blah, blah...  I posted my ad under both "clothing" and "sporting goods", and figured I'd just let it run for a couple weeks.

Not surprisingly, nothing happened.  Weeks went by, and I actually forgot about the ad... until I got a recent email in my covert only-for-things-like-craigslist email account.  The subject read, "Running Shoes".

That jogged (see what I did there?) my memory that I'd put those shoes on craigslist.  At that point, I figured any response wasn't even legit, and was reminded I should probably just bite the bullet and put the shoes in the donation bin.  Chalk the expense up to lessons learned.  I opened the email anyway.  It was from a dude.

      "Any chance you could sell these to me fresh off your feet? Thanks"

Ew.

Okay, there are stranger things than smelly shoe/feet fetishes.  But no.  There's no chance.

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Linking up this week with Mama Kat for the prompt:

3. Write a blog post inspired by the word: change.

the unhitching

 Last Friday, I placed an ad for our cargo trailer.  Our 2004 5x8 smooth skined tube steel framed floor cross membered wall uprighted and roof bowed aluminum roofed with a fiberglass nose coned
undercoated bodied rear barn doored 24" rock guarded swivel up jacked fold-down stabilizer jacked 3/4" plywood floored 2" ball hitched trailer.

{INHALE}

I began fielding inquiries right away.  Who knew there was so much interest in a...(no way I'm describing it again...) trailer?

Some were a bit sketchy.  Some weren't worth responding to.

One of them read:







"...As soon as you get back to me with the above info,the payment will be sent to you by FEDEX and you don't need to worry about the shipping,i have a shipping agent that will come for the pick up and the documentation because i also purchased some farm equipment which will also be shipped... i will be sending an excess fund that will include the shipper fund,soon as you receive the payment, go and cash the check in your bank and deduct your charges and send the rest of the fund to the shipper via western union..."

Oh, come ON!  Isn't that one of the oldest scams in the book?  Does this look like a stupid person's trailer??


I just flagged that one as spam, but part of me wants to play his silly game and somehow nab him.  But I guess I'll just leave it alone.



And yesterday, our loyal trailer left us.  Had we really had it for nine years?  It's strange to feel an empty spot for a trailer, but I admit that I kind of do.  She was our toy hauler.

In the end, she went to a nice man from Denver.  An artist actually.  He travels around to art shows and fairs and was sick of renting from U-(know who).   We discussed art fairs and watercolors while Chaco, who is still on winter break, talked the trailer into releasing her hold on the frozen ground.  Really, it was like the trailer didn't want to leave.

But, they left.  I waved.  To the artist.  And the trailer formerly known as ours.
.