When you shop from Craigslist....

I’ve been searching Craigslist for different things since we started our kitchen project the first of the year. Mostly I’ve been searching for new kitchen chairs. We bought our chairs and table on our 1st Anniversary and they are antiques…which sounds a little more glamorous then they actually are. They started out wonderful – but 13 years of wear and tear on something that was already old had worn them down. The table is still in great shape, just needs to be refinished, but a colorful tablecloth solved that issue. But the chairs were another problem. Jay had Gorilla Glued them until they could be glued no longer. Lately I’ve noticed when I’m dusting them that they whole chair will shift when I simply swipe the seat of it. And the legs are coming loose. When we have anyone else over I always have in the back of mind a prayer that no one’s chair will break.


I don’t search it everyday – maybe once a week. But Monday something struck me and I found the perfect set with 6 chairs for a great price. I contacted the lady in Fair Grove about them. Basically we had to go Monday night if we wanted them. So that is the lead in to my story…..

Going to get this set was a rush operation. I had an appointment that evening in Springfield so I had to meet Jay and the kids there. Jay was in a hurry to get the kids and a trailer out the door. Camryn had been at daycare all day, etc. You know you don’t send your kids (or at least I don’t) in their very best outfits. This time of year I will start putting some of their better things on them since we are almost done with the season – but Monday wasn’t one of those days. But it wouldn’t have mattered because Camryn destroyed her shirt so Stacy put another one on her. Her pants and shirt were mismatched. I had put her hair in a ponytail that morning and I could tell Stacy and redone it during the day. Jay said it looked fine until he put her in the truck….

So I walk into Culvers and the first thing I see is Camryn in mismatched clothes, with a stain on her shirt and hair that looked like she had stuck her finger in a socket. She tends to have pretty wild hair, but this went beyond anything I had ever seen. She tried to pull her pony tail out but she didn’t fully succeed. Instead it was still wrapped around the very end of a wad of hair which made it stick straight out to the side. What hair wasn’t caught up in the rubber band was hanging with a classic pony tail wave in it. She was a mess. Jay and Cade looked fine and I was still in my work clothes so we were passable. I didn’t have a comb so I tried smoothing Camryn’s hair with my fingers. That was like classic phrase “peeing in the ocean.”

We get to the couple’s house, which they were extremely nice, and as we are getting Camryn out of the truck she screams (and I’m not exaggerating that) “I farted, I farted!” Jay told her to shush which only made her scream I farted a couple more times. This couple was middle aged with no kids at home and they had their house on the market – so it was spotless. They are moving the end of the month so they had already started packing, but they still had their furniture around. It was very nice, but it didn’t look much different than anyone else’s house I’ve been to (remember that point). They had furniture and a bookshelf, etc. We looked the table over and decided we would buy it so Jay and the husband started loading it. Something snapped in Camryn and she went a little crazy. She was running around and at one point I saw her lick the doorframe of their dining room. The lady honestly seemed fine with it, she even commented that Camryn was in a new place so she was checking it out. Between worrying about Camryn hurting something or accidently flinging herself down the set of stairs nearby I was a wreck. Then Cade made the classic kid comment that makes all parents wish their kids wore shock collars. “Wow, you have a fragile looking house.” Remember I said it wasn’t all that different than most houses. I don’t know what he was thinking. The lady laughed and said she trained her kids to the house not the house to the kids. I don’t think she meant anything by that at all – but I wonder what she thought our house looked like. She probably thought if we didn’t have it stripped to bare padded walls we needed to! There was a clearly dirty and disheveled little girl running amuck through her home.

I was so glad when the table and chairs were loaded and we could leave. Again, they were extremely nice people. They even asked if we wanted a drink or needed to use the restroom. Once we left I told Jay about Cade’s comment. He was glad he didn’t hear it in person. I told Jay that she told me she was a biochemist. He said “that’s why they had booties hanging on their front door.” Actually I’m wondering if that was for the people looking at the house? Anyway, we figured they were probably fumigating as we spoke. I guess that confirms the Craigslist unwritten rules…..not only do you have to be careful about where you go, you also have to be careful about who you let into your home.